THE HAUNTED BEDROOM (1913)
Article 5229 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-15-2016
Director unknown
Featuring Herbert Prior, Mabel Trunnelle, Augustus Phillips
Country: USA
What it is: Ghost drama

A young couple wishes to marry, but the father of the young man will not agree unless the young woman can produce a dowry of ten thousand francs. She manages to raise one of two thousand, and her brother, a gambler, vows to quickly turn it into ten thousand. He does so, but incurs the wrath of criminals, hides out in a hotel room, hides the money, and then dies. Will the woman ever get her dowry?

It doesn’t say so in the description above, but the rest of the plot involves the ghost of the dead brother fulfilling his promise to get the dowry to his sister. This is one that ended up on my “ones that got away” list, but popped up on YouTube afterwards. It’s an okay drama, but it’s a little on the dull side at least as far as this presentation goes; the movie is hand-cranked and I suspect is somewhat slower than it would be otherwise. It is nice to encounter an early silent in which the ghost is not faked, like so many of them were. Once you get past the exposition, the story is fairly predictable.