Here's Richard Dix (did his friends call him Dick Dix?) in an action movie that seems like it might be more appropriate as a vehicle for Tom Mix. But Dix or Mix, this movie isn't very good.
Dix plays a U.S. Army lieutenant on duty at the Mexican border, where he's assigned to catch drugs smugglers. (Little did the makers of this 1923 movie suspect that, more than 80 years later, the border STILL isn't safe from this problem!) Helene Chadwick is well-cast as a government agent. She must be working undercover, because her character doesn't even have a name. Dix's leading ladies tended to be fainting damsels, but here Chadwick plays a heroine who can hold her own in a fight.
Dix's sergeant is a black man, which makes sense: most of the U.S. Army troops who patrolled the Mexican border in the 1920s and earlier (while the Army was still segregated) were African-American servicemen. Unfortunately, the actor who plays Sergeant Johnson (Tom Wilson) is clearly a white man in dark make-up. Couldn't this movie company find a black actor? Worse luck, Sergeant Johnson is meant to be a comedy-relief role, embodying nearly every minstrel-show stereotype except cowardice.
The main baddie here is Alan Hale, ably abetted by some of the nastiest villains of the silent screen ... including Jean Hersholt, Walter Long and Lionel Belmore. (I also spotted Richard Arlen as one of Dix's enlisted men.) All the baddies like to hang about at the local cantina. Eventually, the villains kidnap Helene and the regiment's colonel. Now get this, please: Dix has an entire regiment of armed and trained cavalrymen at his beck and call. So what does he do? Natch, he goes off to rescue the hostages single-handed.
SPOILERS COMING. There's a spirited and very well-choreographed climactic fight, as two- fisted Dix takes on about a dozen ornery varmints, with Chadwick covering his back. However, even Richard Dix can't triumph against these odds, so eventually the villains close in on him and Helene. It looks like the end is near ... so Dix draws his service revolver (why didn't he do this before?) and places the business end against the fair Helene's throat, apparently intending to save her from a fate worse than death by killing her. Suddenly, these silent-film actors react to a sound that we can't hear. A bugle call! The cavalry are coming to the rescue!
What a movie! There are several lapses in logic in 'Quicksands', but no more so than in plenty of other action movies. That title is irrelevant: if there are any quicksands in 'Quicksands', I must have blinked and missed them. I'll rate this he-man brawlfest a solid 6 out of 10. I might have rated it higher if the sergeant hadn't been a racist caricature.
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