The House of Hate

The House of Hate is a 1918 American film serial directed by George B. Seitz, produced when many early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The serial was originally announced at 15 episodes but due to its box office success was extended to 20, at which time content involving German spies was interpolated into the murder mystery plot. A print of a condensed featurized version of The House of Hate from the collection of filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein is held in the Gosfilmofund film archive in Russia. Most of the propagandistic spy content is excised in the condensation, which does not include chapter divisions but does apparently include most of the content of episodes 1-4 as originally released, highlights from the middle chapters of the serial, and the complete finale including the extended flashback in which the masked villain's identity is revealed. On April 12, 2015 the Fort Lee Film Commission held a screening of a video transfer of existing footage from this film lasting three hours, including shots of Pearl White atop Cliffhanger Point on the Hudson Palisades. A restored version of the serial with reconstructed opening titles, dialogue, chapter summaries, and chapter divisions was released on DVD by The Serial Squadron on May 25, 2015.