User Reviews

When detective Carl Winterhoff is sent to investigate some counterfeiters, they capture him, as well as a ratcatcher who arrives with his ferrets. Both men are tied up and gagged. Will the ratcatcher's ferrets be able to rescue these valiant men?

This Selig short tells a fairly interesting story and the presence of the ferrets is a nice little twist in this story. However, Selig was probably the most conservative of the Patents Trust companies when it came to cinematic techniques and it shows here in the camera set-ups. Except for one close-up of the ferrets, the entire movie shot shot in medium takes with no camera movement; notice the sequence in which the police travel to the counterfeiters' hide-out. The cars are shot on the city street, moving towards the camera, and then there is a cut to show their progress via another shot of the autos in the distance moving towards he camera. The editing is adequate, showing the information being transmitted, but although by now intercutting between the people coming to the rescue and the victims was standard at Biograph, there's none of that here. Except for the presence of the ferrets, there is little novel in this short subject.

If you wish to see this movie for yourself, there is a good copy on the Eye Institute site on Youtube.

This is an interesting picture. Oscar Eagle produced it. It is a story of the underworld, so called, in so far that a band of counterfeiters is to be rounded up by a detective. A rat catcher, with a couple of ferrets, releases the detective when the counterfeiters catch him. - The Moving Picture World, March 22, 1913