''The Dungeon'' is a 1922

race film The race film or race movie was a genre of film produced in the United States between about 1915 and the early 1950s, consisting of films produced for African American, black audiences, and featuring black casts. Approximately five hundred race ...

directed, written, produced and distributed by

Oscar Micheaux Oscar Devereaux Micheaux (; January 2, 1884 – March 25, 1951) was an American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films. Although the short-lived Lincoln Motion Picture Company was the first movie company owned and c ...

, considered the African-American

Cecil B. DeMille Cecil Blount DeMille (; August 12, 1881January 21, 1959) was an American filmmaker and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of American cinema and the most co ...

due to his prolific output of films during the silent era, one of his greatest works being '' Body and Soul'' (1924). ''The Dungeon'' was his first horror effort, an early

blaxploitation In American cinema, Blaxploitation is the film subgenre of action movie derived from the exploitation film genre in the early 1970s, consequent to the combined cultural momentum of the black civil rights movement, the black power movement, ...

take on the ''

Bluebeard "Bluebeard" ( ) is a French Folklore, folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in . The tale is about a wealthy man in the habit of murdering his wives an ...

'' legend. Micheaux was criticized by D. Ireland Thomas, a columnist with the ''

Chicago Defender ''The Chicago Defender'' is a Chicago-based online African-American newspaper. It was founded in 1905 by Robert S. Abbott and was once considered the "most important" newspaper of its kind. Abbott's newspaper reported and campaigned against Jim ...

'', for his casting of light-skinned African Americans who could pass for white, attempting to make his films more commercially successful. Thomas questioned whether Micheaux was "relying on his name alone to tell the public that it is a race production; or maybe he is after booking it in white theaters." No print of the film is known to exist and it is presumed to be a

lost film A lost film is a feature film, feature or short film in which the original negative or copies are not known to exist in any studio archive, private collection, or public archive. Films can be wholly or partially lost for a number of reasons. ...

Plot

The film focuses on Myrtle Downing, an

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

woman who is coerced into marrying a corrupt would-be politician named Gyp Lassiter even though she is really in love with Stephen Cameron, a young lawyer. When she discovers that her husband has conspired to support segregationist policies in exchange for support by white political power brokers, she objects to his crooked dealings and gets herself imprisoned in a secret dungeon where her husband had murdered his previous wives.

Cast

* Shingzie Howard as Myrtle Downing * William Fountaine as Stephen Cameron * J. Kenneth Goodman as Gyp Lassiter * William Crowell * Earle Browne Cook * Blanche Thompson"The Dungeon (1922)"
at IMDB.

References

External links

* 1922 films 1922 horror films 1922 lost films 1920s American films American black-and-white films American silent feature films Films directed by Oscar Micheaux Lost horror films Lost silent American films Race films Silent horror films {{1920s-horror-film-stub