A Mormon Maid

Fluctuates between standard melodrama and superhero villainy. If you're looking for hard lined mormonsploitation go with Trapped By the Mormons. If you're looking for some mormon bashing with some Ku Klux Klan mashed in, this is your one stop shop.

A loopily melodramatic Western passing from the sunny outdoors to the shadowy occult realm of (*gasp*) Mormonism. Stylistically, it feels right at home next to De Mille in the early Paramount catalog, if less pricy (it even has the same art director). It's nice to see a young Mae Murray in the days before the invention of her usual screen persona. It also imagines the early Mormons as nasty proto-Klansmen forcing polygamy on all and sundry willy-nilly, so, er... make of that what you will.

This movie might have had all the American elements of savage Indians, religious nuts and the Ku Klux Klan, but the gloomy psychological story telling was very Russian, with one bleak moment following a even darker turn of torment. Director Robert Z. Leonard shoots a very visually effective film, using shadows and light brilliantly to capture the sinister mood. The sole ray of sunshine is Mae Murray, but even she gets strangled into submission by the evil of Noah Beer!