A Mormon Maid (With Original Piano Score) on DVD

A MORMON MAID (1917) Starring Mae Murray, Frank Borzage, Hobart Bosworth and Noah Beery. Set in 1840s America, this film is an astonishing exercise in intolerance and bad taste. When the Hogue family are attacked by Indians, they are rescued by a group of Mormons. With their cabin burned to the ground, they join the Mormons to live in their Utah settlement - the borders of which are guarded, and the laws enforced, by the "Avenging Angels", four hundred oath-bound fanatics who dress just like the Ku-Klux-Klan. Everything is just fine for two years but, after that point, things start going down hill. Somehow resembling, with his remarkable beard, both Abraham Lincoln and the Wolf Man, the evil Mormom leader, Darius Burr, decides to wed the underage Dora Hogue (Murray), making her his fifth wife and child bride. Parental interference is no problem since the Avenging Angels have already killed her father and her mother blew out her own brains when the Mormons forced her husband to take a second wife. If you're of the Mormon faith and easily offended, do not buy this DVD. Others should keep duct tape handy to prevent jaws from coming into contact with floors. Made from a gorgeous film source, this one is a real hoot! Original piano score composed and performed by Stuart Oderman.