PEOPLE’S PICTURE PALACE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 145863, 23 June 1917, Page 7

PEOPLE’S PICTURE PALACE.

“PIDGIN ISLAND.” “Pidgin Island,” the picturised version by Metro of Harold M'Grath's famous novel, opened successfully at the People’s last evening. John Cranford (Harold Lockwood), a secret service agent, falls in love with a girl whom he believes to be a law breaker. The scene .is the Canadian border, where extensive smuggling is going on. In the meantime Diana Wynne (May Allison) continues to watch and wait for, unknown to John, she is a Customs agent herself. And she intercepts a telegram that forms a clue to the smuggling. So she and John work at oross-purposes, each on the track of the smugglers, and each suspecting the other, until the exciting denouement clears up the mystery. Cranford’s pursuit of those who are defrauding the government gives ample opportunity to show sensational raids on opium dens and smuggling operations. Some swiftly moving scenes, tilled to the brim with excitement, thow these operations both before and after their discovery by the secret service agents. The densely populated districts of a great city’s Chinatown, a flight in an aeroplane by the smuggler’s accomplices, carrying a fortune in jewels, a great storm at sea, in which both the principal characters narrowly escape drowning, their almost miraculous recapture of the jewels, which seem lost beyond all possibility of discovery, are only a few of the incidents of this unusually fascinating picture-play. “Pidgin Island” is one of the most important and interesting releases of the year. An excellent travel and industrial film of the granite industry, together with a bright comedy, complete a fine programme. On Tuesday, Paramount present Ann Pennington in a great picture of circus life* “The Rainbow Princess.”