The influence of Cecil B. DeMille is clearly in this Pine-Thomas Production from Paramount's B picture unit. William H. Pine was DeMille's Associate Producer for several of his feature films and this film even with its low budget there are a lot of DeMille like touches here.
You'd have to go back to some of DeMille's silent films though. The story concerns coalminer Chester Morris who marries a traveling singer played by Nancy Kelly who has ambitions to climb socially. With her spurring him on, Morris gains some promotions and then gets a hold of a piece of land and opens his own coal mine. Whatever he does including building the grandest mansion in town is not enough for Kelly who's two timing him with the owner's son of another mine played by Morgan Conway.
The last ten minutes of the movie comes the Tornado which acts as the great leveler of Morris's ambitions. It's almost of biblical proportions and for that I refer you to the silent Ten Commandments, Madam Satan, and other DeMille films with great disasters coming as retribution.
Pine-Thomas films set a good standard for B pictures. They may be cheap, but they never look ragged and Tornado definitely fills that bill.
You'd have to go back to some of DeMille's silent films though. The story concerns coalminer Chester Morris who marries a traveling singer played by Nancy Kelly who has ambitions to climb socially. With her spurring him on, Morris gains some promotions and then gets a hold of a piece of land and opens his own coal mine. Whatever he does including building the grandest mansion in town is not enough for Kelly who's two timing him with the owner's son of another mine played by Morgan Conway.
The last ten minutes of the movie comes the Tornado which acts as the great leveler of Morris's ambitions. It's almost of biblical proportions and for that I refer you to the silent Ten Commandments, Madam Satan, and other DeMille films with great disasters coming as retribution.
Pine-Thomas films set a good standard for B pictures. They may be cheap, but they never look ragged and Tornado definitely fills that bill.