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When Black Deering (Hart)and his gang are ambushed during a daring train holdup, he learns his betrayer was one of his own men, Jordan (Joseph Singleton), whose blood money has bought him a parlor of gambling and prostitution. Upon escaping from the authorities, Deering flies into the wilderness and finds shelter in the home of an abandoned woman (Anna Q. Nilsson). There, the vengeful gunfighter finds the possibility of redemption, but his happiness is shortlived when two posses -- one led by the murderous Jordan, the other by a local sheriff -- converge upon the isolated cabin.
Digitally transferred from a rare tinted-and-toned original print (which suffers come color deterioration in the final reel) and backed by a musical score compiled by Eric Beheim from vintage arrangements, this Kino on Video edition of The Toll Gate fully captures the vibrancy of William S. Hart's persona -- his chiseled features and ambiguous morality -- and makes obvious the influence he had upon the many weathered badmen, such as John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, who arose in his shadow.
Includes the Mack Sennett comedy short, His Bitter Pill. Produced when Mack Sennett's comedies and Bill Hart's westerns were both distributed by Triangle, this is Sennett's famous parody of Hart in which the noble cowboy is viciously lampooned by Mack Swain (best remembered as Big Jim McKay in The Gold Rush). His Bitter Pill is apparently a genuine western, but reflected in the bent mirror of Keystone humor.
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