They also manage to capture Marks before he can identify any of the four and imprison him in a basement.Īs eight o’clock approaches, Ramon is locked in his study with police guarding the door. Meanwhile, one of the four manages to impersonate Inspector Falmouth and personally deliver the final warning to Ramon that he will be executed at eight that evening if he does not improve the conditions of his workforce. They offer the thief a deal to let him go and promise him the reward if he will seek out and identify the man who he stole the note book from. When Marks is arrested the police make the connection between the note book and the four just men. But in planning their next move one of the four has his note book containing their plans stolen by a petty thief, Billy Marks (Robert Vallis). In order to underline their apparent invincibility the four announce that they will personally deliver a final warning to Ramon. But the other three are on his trail and manage to catch him (image, left) and return him to their hide-out before the police can be called. When a newspaper, The Megaphone, publicises an offer of a big reward if one of the four will turn the others in, Thery is tempted and goes to surrender himself to the newspaper’s editor.

But as a result, the police in the form of Inspector Falmouth (Charles Tilson-Chowne) are soon on the trail of the four just men. When a bomb (albeit without a detonator) is placed in one of Ramon’s factories as a warning he remains undeterred. The film kicks off with the secretive four just men themselves, Manfred (Cecil Humphreys), Poiccart (Owen Roughwood), Gonzalez (George Bellamy and Thery (Charles Crocker-King), planning what steps they would next take against industrialist Sir Phillip Ramon (Teddy Arundell) in order to halt his exploitation of his workforce. In the event, this was probably a mistake but more of that later. (What we really need is for some sad, nerdy character to draw up a sort of calendar setting out what silent films are playing when in order to prevent just this sort of situation!) Anyway, much though I love Pandora’s Box, its a film I’ve seen many times before so today’s choice had to be the rarely screened, and new to me, The Four Just Men.

Was it to be Pandora’s Box at the Phoenix with Stephen Horne or The Four Just Men at the BFI with Neil Brand. Today saw yet another of those annoying silent film fixture clashes.

The four just men book