The Switch Tower

1913
11m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Marion Emmons and Henry B. Walthall in The Switch Tower (1913)

He was a regular boy and his father a switchman. The boy determined to be like his dad and spent his play hours around, the switch-tower. Thus at the crucial moment he was able to save his f... Read allHe was a regular boy and his father a switchman. The boy determined to be like his dad and spent his play hours around, the switch-tower. Thus at the crucial moment he was able to save his father's honor as a switchman, when the struggle between love and duty came and later to co... Read allHe was a regular boy and his father a switchman. The boy determined to be like his dad and spent his play hours around, the switch-tower. Thus at the crucial moment he was able to save his father's honor as a switchman, when the struggle between love and duty came and later to come to the aid of his parents in the hands of the desperate counterfeiters, eventually caus... Read all

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IMDb RATING

6.1/10

YOUR RATING

2User reviews

See production info at IMDbPro

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6.154

Featured reviews

7planktonrules

I like that kid!

"The Switch Tower" (called "The Switchtower" on the actual title to the movie) is a very good film from the Biograph Studio. It tells a story well and is quite well done for 1912 (imdb says 1913).

The story begins with the father going to work at the railroad. He's a switchman--a guy whose job it is to turn the switches to route trains to various tracks. However, when his wife is accosted by evil hobos and runs to cover in a nearby shack, she happens upon a group of evil counterfeiters (led by a young Lionel Barrymore). When the husband sees this, he runs to the rescue but it captured. With no one to throw the switches, it's up to his little boy to do the job. The resourceful kid does but that isn't all....

This film features an interesting story that is told economically and well for the time. Worth seeing if you are a fan of early cinema.

6alonzoiii-1

Let Your Child Play With Guns -- It May Save Your Life

This is a Biograph one-reeler that was not directed by Griffith, but it hardly seems to matter as his stock company and Billy Bitzer are on hand to give the production that Griffith feel. And this one is fun -- as an ornery little kid, through luck and pluck, manages to save his Mom and his Dad from a deadly bunch of counterfeiters, and in the meantime, keep the trains on his Dad's railroad running on the right track.

If those old melodramas from 1912 had been like this, the genre would not have faded away. Modern filmmakers could learn a lot just from this one reeler on how to tell (and sell) a story quickly, and still incorporate a lot of action.

Worth seeing -- it's not stodgy in the least.