Silent movies - The Mystery of the Leaping Fish

I know I had Douglas Fairbanks last week, but this short happened to leap my way - wow, what a bridge to the title 🥳 I have for you "The Mystery of the Leaping Fish" from 1916.

If you take a good look at the theatrical poster, you may be surprised. There are several hints there what the movie is about. "The 1916 Cocaine Classic"?? I guess before diving into the plot, we have to talk about a few things here.
1. This is a Sherlock Holmes spoof. We all know Sherlock has that unhealthy habit which Dr Watson does not approve of. The name "Coke" Ennyday, however, seems more like a joke on the "American Sherlock Holmes", Craig Kennedy, of whose existence I heard for the first time (but promptly put the first novel by Arthur B. Reeve in my vintage crime folder then).
2. 1916 was way before the Hays Code was enforced and even before the Hollywood scandals which first led to the studios to start self-regulating through recommendations Hays introduced in 1924. Dope was also mentioned in other films.
3. Cocaine has a long history of use - Coca Cola, for example, has its name for a reason after all - and only in the 20th century the perception of the drug and its medical uses started to change. The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act which regulated and taxed the use of opiates is from 1914. Unfortunately cocaine in Hollywood also has its history ... and its victims.
4. The story is by Tod Browning, the 1931 "Dracula" director who was known for horror and underworld dramas. "Freaks" is still haunting me, so I doubted this short would be able to beat that.

Now that we cleared that up, we can get to the plot. I need you to not even try to apply any logic to it because there isn't any. No, honestly, don't try.

We meet "the world's greatest scientific detective", Coke Ennyday. Yeah, he doesn't quite look like it, but we know the reason for that.

We even know it more when we see this. No, I don't mean the disguises, but the box standing in front of it.
(And why does the servant remind me of Peter Boyle in "Young Frankenstein", only with a bellboy's uniform that is too small?)

Ennyday is needed by Town Constable Doolittle - because there is a man rolling in wealth with no visible means of support (Doolittle's words, not mine). Very suspicious.

Actually ... literally rolling in wealth which brings Scrooge McDuck to mind although this guy here doesn't swim in coins which looks a lot more comfy.

Guess what, he made all the money being involved in drug smuggling. No, no ... no, stop ... don't ask why they would send Ennyday of all people to check it out ... I told you, no logic!
Ennyday drives to the coast and finds out that the drugs are smuggled via inflatable "leaping fish" (it says they were invented for this film, again, don't ask me, but they do make me think of flying fish and I think they could still be popular today).

Pink-wing flying fish,
public domain via Wikimedia

Just 25 cents an hour to ride the leaping fish personally inflated by the "fish blower" girl (Bessie Love)!

To make it short, using some of his amazing disguises - the meaning of amazing being open for interpretation - Ennyday finds out that the suspicious guy works together with a young lady and some Asian (!!) guys who run the "Sum Hop Laundry" (ouch ... but I learned a new slang word for opium) as a front.

Chaos ensues (plus some sampling of the smuggled goods by Ennyday and the fish blower fighting back very nicely when she gets kidnapped and one of the gang tries to assault her), but in the end all the villains are ready to get picked up by the police and there's a happy ending for Ennyday and the fish blower (it wasn't unusual for characters not to have a name then).

But is that the end of the film?
No.
Because next we are in the office of a scenario editor who tells Doug to give up scenario writing and stick with acting, so Doug and Bessie leave.

The End!

You probably have questions now. I have questions. I doubt anyone has answers, so here's a quote from Fritzi Kramer's blog: "I have some advice: don't ask all these questions. Just sit back, relax and enjoy this bizarre cult classic for what it is."

I have a bit of a thing for the strange or slightly bizarre, for example I'm a Monty Python fan and I love (some) weird cartoons. And like Fritzi also predicted - "it's not a good movie and it's not a good comedy", but I was "unable to look away for even one minute". I went "whoa" and "what the ..." and made noises.
Then I remembered how I once watched a bad animal horror movie with someone and we seriously asked ourselves what the first production meeting for that movie had been like .. as in what did they have for, uhm, refreshments? I had the same feeling here. What was going on?

Lea Stans writes that "for the rest of his life Doug would pretend "The Mystery of the Leaping Fish" didn't exist". Yeah, I get that.
I don't regret watching it. I'm just not done analyzing why yet.


Sources and further reading:

1. Fritzi Kramer: The Mystery of the Leaping Fish - A silent film review. On: Movies Silently, October 25, 2015
2. Lea Stans: Thoughts On: "The Mystery of the Leaping Fish" (1916). On: Silent-ology, November 14, 2020
3. Douglas Small: Cocaine: a cultural history, from medical wonder to illicit drug. On: Aeon. Essays. October 4, 2024