The Silent Command

A patriotic silent war thriller from Fox, notable as Bela Lugosi's American film debut. Edmund Lowe plays a naval officer who feigns disgrace to infiltrate a ring of foreign saboteurs, led by Benedict Hisston (Lugosi), plotting to destroy the Panama Canal and the Atlantic Fleet. Director J. Gordon Edwards emphasized Lugosi's hypnotic eyes in extreme close-up, helping forge the screen persona that would make him Dracula. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.