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The Thirteenth Hour provides Lionel Barrymore with an opportunity to do a highly effective imitation of Lon Chaney imitating a three-fingered master crook. Despite his missing digit, Mr. Barrymore is capable of opening all kinds of sliding doors and secret panels; but he is incapable of stealing the picture from a police dog called Rex in the picture (real name Napoleon). Although at an important crisis he mistakes Mr. Barrymore for a wax dummy, this animal adds enormously to what would otherwise remain a not very startling reiteration of the Jekyll-Hyde theme complicated by stupid detectives.
The Spotlight. Herein a little U. S. blonde, Lizzie Stokes, is transformed into dark and dangerous Russian actress, Olga Rostova, thus allowing Esther Ralston to prove that she can be quite as intriguing under a black wig as under her own shingled gold. The plot moves quietly along until the moment when Olga Rostova must tell her most devoted admirer in the presence of her producer and severest critic that she is, in reality, no Russian beauty but only poor little Lizzie Stokes. At this crisis, Esther Ralston also proves that she can actually act when circumstances make it imperative. The Wizard is one of those melodramatic mystery cinemas whose plots are based on the misbehavior of a subhuman creature. In this case, the creature (generally referred to as the "Thing") is conjured into existence by a wicked surgeon to accomplish the death of four persons; needless to say one of the four persons is the heroine and needless to say the hero, a young newspaper reporter, rescues her from the disastrous embraces. Before this happens there have been many moments when watchers, in an agony of excitement, have twisted their terror into laughter. The hero is merrily played by Edmund Lowe, the heroine charmingly by Leila Hyams, the "Thing" effectively imitated by one George Kotsonaros.
Peaks of Destiny. So enormous are the powdered peaks of the Alps, so wild and casual the winds that sweep between them that the actions of people must seem in comparison fragile and inconsequent, even unreal. The people in this picture are mainly three; Diotina, a dancer, whose amorous flippancies stir her fiance to jealousy as they stir his young friend to devotion. The fiance traps his friend on a high and dangerous ledge; then, at the instant of carrying out his plan, he regrets it and clings to a rope through a night of storm until men arrive to rescue both of them. The melodrama of the story would make it seem strained in any setting; but such is the splendor of the background that probably any play of human emotions would be dwarfed against it. Brilliant photography of snow storms and ski races, capable if not superlative acting by Leni Riefenstahl, Louis Trenker and Ernst Peterson, make the picture a valuable and exciting experiment in spectacle and a worthy product of the German UFA, noted for its success in experimenting.