The Warrior Strain

1920-01
Silent
50m

Young Lord Billy sniffs out sneaky German marauders in this flag-waving war drama - thrills for British boys, 1919-style.

Lonely young Lord Billy, who misses his dear departed mother, has nothing to do but lounge about the castle all day while his father, the Earl, attends to important affairs of state - until the noble lad joins the Army Cadets. Rising through the ranks to become the Lance Corporal of his squad, patrolling undefended points along the English coast, he's soon on the trail of German marauders.

This resolutely patriotic British thriller from prolific American-born director and screenwriter Floyd Martin Thornton didn't see release until 1919 - by which time WWI was over. Its cheery, fanciful glorification of youthful involvement in the war effort stands in stark contrast to a reality that had seen millions of young servicemen massacred in a bloody conflict.

Forgotten Features

A hand-picked assortment of hard-to-see British feature films, featuring mischievous mermaids, murderous minors and military mayhem.

Thanks to decades of DVD and online publishing, not to mention archive revivals and restorations, more of Britain’s screen heritage is available today than ever before. You might even be forgiven for imagining that the whole of British cinema is now just a click away.

But much of that history - from the silent era to the relatively recent past - remains out of reach. This selection from the vaults, hand-picked by the BFI's curators, goes some way to remedying that. These fresh rediscoveries offer something for all tastes: whether futuristic fantasy, battle-of-the-sexes comedy, subversive provocation or an Indian-British rarity.