Wolves of Kultur is a 1918 American silent adventure film serial written and directed by Joseph A. Golden. Produced by Western Photoplays and distributed by Pathé Exchange, the fifteen-episode serial starred Leah Baird, Sheldon Lewis and Charles Hutchison. Its story concerns German agents attempting to obtain the plans for a radio-controlled torpedo. The first episode, The Torture Trap, was released on October 13, 1918.
Long considered lost, most of the serial was recovered from surviving nitrate reels purchased in 1992. An international group of film archives subsequently reconstructed the serial, although part of episode 10 remains missing.
Plot
Alice Grayson's uncle invents a wireless-controlled torpedo. German agents led by Henry Hartman offer him a large sum for the invention, but he refuses, declaring that only the United States should possess it. The agents murder him with poison gas and steal the model and plans. Alice vows to recover them and avenge his death.
During her investigation, Alice meets Bob Moore, a mining engineer pursuing German spy Mario Zaremba, who has deceived Bob's sister Helen. Detective Roger Barclay initially mistakes Alice and Bob for members of the conspiracy and repeatedly pursues them. After Hartman dies in an automobile crash, Zaremba assumes leadership of the organization and steals a naval codebook from Commander Brown's wife. Zaremba is later killed during a struggle with Alice, and Walker, an American-born German sympathizer described as "Kaiser-mad", succeeds him.
The conspirators assemble the torpedo in a seaside cave and prepare to use it against a transport carrying American soldiers. Barclay infiltrates the organization, while Alice and Bob attempt to locate the weapon. After the torpedo is launched, Alice overpowers its operator and redirects it toward the conspirators' yacht, killing Walker. Barclay brings agents from the Secret Service, who arrest the remaining conspirators. The President thanks Alice for exposing the spies and saving the transport. Alice and Bob marry, and a possible marriage between Helen and Barclay is suggested.
Cast
Leah Baird as Alice Grayson Charles Hutchison as Bob Moore Sheldon Lewis as Roger Barclay Betty Howe as Helen Moore Mary Hull as Marie Zaremba Edmund Dalby as Mario Zaremba Austin Webb as Henry Hartman William Cavanaugh as Commander Brown Frederick Arthur Karl Dane as Carter Edwin Denison
Title
The title uses Kultur in its First World War propaganda sense rather than simply as the German word for culture. According to the Canadian War Museum, wartime propaganda turned German Kultur into a derogatory term suggesting a national predisposition toward warfare, cruelty and destruction, placing Germany outside the community of civilized nations.
The distinction was already being discussed in the American press shortly after the war began. In a 1914 essay titled “Culture vs. Kultur,” Princeton professor Frank Jewett Mather Jr. defined Kultur as the organized civil, military and economic efficiency of a nation, within which the individual was subordinated to the state. He contrasted it with what he called the more humane and individualistic values of “culture,” and characterized the war as a conflict between Germany's regimented Kultur and more flexible civilizations.
Pathé's advertising employed the word in this established anti-German sense, describing the serial as depicting plots in the United States associated with the “Kultur of the Hun.” Reviewing its first two episodes, Peter Milne observed that the title itself led audiences to expect a story about German agents.
The American publicity material deposited for copyright registration identified the conspirators throughout the serial as German agents or “Huns”. The first episode's description called Hartman the leader of a German band and Zaremba a German spy; later descriptions characterized Hartman as an agent of the Kaiser and Walker as an American-born sympathizer with Germany. Publicity for the final episode described the serial as revealing to Americans the danger posed by “enemies within”.
The surviving intertitles, however, do not explicitly identify the villains as Germans or “Huns”, despite episode titles that do so. The English intertitles in the restored serial were translated from the French titles in the surviving nitrate print, using translations from the Blackhawk material where possible. When the restoration was presented at the 2004 Giornate del Cinema Muto, film historian Jay Weissberg suggested that the intertitles may have been toned down for a postwar reissue, while noting that the date and circumstances of any such revision remained unknown. The copyright publicity therefore demonstrates that the American publicity framing was more explicitly anti-German than the text preserved through the French print, but does not establish when or where the wording was altered.
A newspaper column published a week before the serial's release attributed the title to a conversation between Baird and columnist Beatrice Blair. Blair wrote that Baird was dissatisfied with the title previously proposed for the serial. When Baird described Prussian autocracy as “wolves” and Blair referred to its so-called Kultur, Baird reportedly combined the terms as Wolves of Kultur.
Production
In June 1918, Variety reported that Golden, president of Western Photoplays, had signed Baird to star in the company's first serial. The proposed production was initially described as having sixteen episodes. By September, it was being advertised as the fifteen-episode Wolves of Kultur, written and directed by Golden. A contemporary profile reported that Golden considered Wolves of Kultur the high point of his production career to that time and that he had made the serial without a written script.
The first three episodes comprised seven reels. They were presented at an exhibitors' showing on the roof of a New York theater with accompaniment by a full orchestra. A prologue showing President Woodrow Wilson and quoting one of his speeches reportedly recurred throughout the serial.
Film historian Raymond William Stedman characterized Wolves of Kultur as a wartime counterespionage serial rather than a depiction of the fighting itself. He noted that it begins as a Western before shifting after several reels to a metropolitan setting involving spies and saboteurs.
Film historian Kalton C. Lahue described Wolves of Kultur as Hutchison's first serial and wrote that, although he was billed below the other leading players, his performance attracted enough fan mail for Golden to cast him in two subsequent serials, The Great Gamble (1919) and The Whirlwind (1920).
Release and promotion
Pathé promoted the production as a patriotic serial exposing German agents engaged in plotting and propaganda in the United States. Its advertising included a national campaign using twenty-four-sheet posters. Pathé also contacted state branches of the Council of National Defense, seeking their help in recommending and publicizing the serial. Officials in Alabama, Idaho, Iowa and Wyoming were reported to have offered assistance. A private screening of early episodes was later arranged in Des Moines for Iowa Governor William L. Harding, former senator Lafayette Young and other state and municipal officials.
The first episode appeared during the week beginning October 13, when the 1918 influenza pandemic had forced widespread theater closures. A trade report based on Pathé publicity claimed that at least 90 percent of American motion-picture theaters had closed during the week of its release. Pathé responded with a four-week sales campaign from November 3 through November 30, during which approximately 250 members of its sales organization were expected to concentrate on booking the serial.
The Chicago Board of Censors ordered deletions from at least six episodes. The cuts consisted principally of shootings, physical assaults and scenes involving explosives. The most extensive were made to episode 8 and included a holdup, the binding and beating of a man, several shootings, struggles on a couch and settee, a close-up of a woman being burned with a cigar and a scene in which she was shot from a horse.
In 1919, the serial was marketed internationally under variants of the alternate title The Messenger of Death. It was released under that title in Australia and sold under the same title for distribution in Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala; its French release was titled Le Messager de la mort.
In 1924, Clarion Photoplays, part of the Weiss Brothers–Artclass organization, released five five-reel features described as having been revised from Wolves of Kultur and Golden's subsequent serial, The Great Gamble: Ten After Ten, The Law Demands, The Fatal Plunge, The Radio Flyer and Fangs of the Wolf. The films may have been edited or supervised by director Harry O. Hoyt, although that attribution remains uncertain.
Reception
Reviewing the first two episodes in Motion Picture News, Peter Milne described the serial as stunt-driven melodrama in which physical and psychological sensationalism had been raised to an extreme. He called Golden's direction “exceedingly old-fashioned” and criticized the performers' exaggerated gestures, the patriotic intertitles and Sheldon Lewis's contrived appearances. Milne nevertheless concluded that its rapid action would absorb devotees of serial films.
In France, the critic “Nyctalope” viewed all fifteen episodes at two screenings held at the Ciné Max-Linder on October 4 and 6, 1919. Writing in La Cinématographie française, he praised the serial's photography, performances and plot, particularly its spectacular sequences and its ability to sustain interest throughout its length. He predicted that it would appeal to audiences and prove profitable for exhibitors.
In January 1920, the same magazine reported that a Paris exhibitor had booked Le Messager de la mort despite previously claiming that audiences were no longer interested in serials. According to the report, the serial's title was greeted enthusiastically by spectators; the magazine cited the incident in challenging the supposed decline of public interest in the form.
Episodes
+ Episodes of Wolves of Kultur No. Title Surviving restored length 1 The Torture Trap 3 reels; 804 m 2 The Iron Chair 2 reels; 488 m 3 Trapping the Traitors 2 reels; 480 m 4 The Ride to Death 2 reels; 477 m 5 Through the Flames 2 reels; 533 m 6 Trails of Treachery 2 reels; 465 m 7 The Leap of Despair 2 reels; 400 m 8 In the Hands of the Hun 2 reels; 538 m 9 The Precipice of Death 2 reels; 537 m 10 When Woman Wars Incomplete; reel 1 only, 202 m 11 Betwixt Heaven and Earth 2 reels; 526 m 12 The Tower of Tears 2 reels; 551 m 13 The Hun's Hell Trap 2 reels; 537 m 14 The Code of Hate 2 reels; 512 m 15 The Reward of Patriotism 2 reels; 506 m
Contemporary Pathé schedules list weekly releases through episode 12, beginning October 13 and continuing through December 29, 1918. The copyright publicity deposits document the finalized fifteen-episode sequence. An early publicity account printed a substantially different sequence: it included Within the Web and The Old Glory Girl, which do not appear in the final schedule, omitted The Hun's Hell Trap and The Code of Hate, and listed The Towers of Tears as episode 14 rather than The Tower of Tears as episode 12. Although the account appeared on December 30, its references to preparations for the serial's first release show that it reproduced earlier publicity material.
Preservation and restoration
The serial was long considered lost. In 1968, film historian Kalton C. Lahue reported that only a small portion of Wolves of Kultur was known to survive. Bound and Gagged reproduced a frame from what Lahue described as the only reel then known to exist, while elsewhere in the book he reported knowing the whereabouts of one surviving chapter.