Group 1

Early Thrillers
Vilans: These films had to be respectable - law abiding institutions. the first film to break the law was 'The Great Train Robbery' - landmark 1903; they showed moral lessions that provedhow dangerious and unprofitable crime was. Thugs were shown usually with heavy blck make-up to be unshaven.
Heros were coloursless and the bad guy/villans wore the darker clothing and were the bulk of plot motivation. for example, 'The Lonely Villa' and 'A girl and her Trust' created tension by the heroine constantly menaced by the villians, with the occansional cutaways to the hero putting rescue plans into operation. At these times the motive was quite simple; robbery. All villiany was like this. It influenced alot of melodramatic, victorian novels. Th movies were full of such situations as a girl taking on a mans job and proving herself to handle all emergencies as well as a man including the outwitting of robers.

By 1910 the villians had become sophisticated villians, hoodlimus, brutes and other clearly defined types. then by 1914 the movies had changed quite a bit, they were on there way to becoming an art as they were already big business sprked by names like Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Helen Gardener, and Maurice Costello, the star system had arrived to sky high rocket saleries. Once a player/character became a star there was no fluctuating between good guys and bad gauys, he had to be somebody the audience had to root for all the time.

It was Panzer who conveniently encompassed severl different brands of villiany. First, he was ruthless, with no regard at al to humand life. Second, he wqas cunning and crafty. Like in 'The Perils of Pauline' playing Pearls guardian, he tried to kill her off from the first chapter to the last, and never once did pearl tumble to the double-game he was playing. He betrayed her at every turn, set her out to sea in a leaky boat, sprinkled barbed wire on the road hoping to wreck her racign car, and tried poison, time bombs, snakes, and every other conceivable mode of execution in his efforts to dispatch her. But, even in the final episode when his teachery had rebounded on himself and he had gone to watery grave, meanwhile Pearl seemed naively unaware of his perfidy. on the other hand, she didnt seem induly distressed by her guardians suden demise, either. Panzer, dressed to the hilt and usually sporting jack boots and a deer-stalker hat, gave his villiany a robust exuberance that seemed to have even greater gusto when compared with the rather underplayed heroics of Peal White. He'd grimace, shake his fist, pantomime his newest scheme, and gloat gleefully in anticipation of its succcessful execution. Panzer was in movies until the 1950's, somehow he always seemed to be playing Koerner and perhaps because of that never became a really important silent villain. Koerner was one of the last standing grand Victorian villian.
Reference ; Bok written by William K.Everson, Published by Citadel Press,