The Highbinders is a 1915 American short crime film directed by Tod Browning. It is not known whether the film currently survives.
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Highbinders was the film's working title. In the original plot, those who were given power by the medallion became Highbinders, and Snakehead's goal was to create a Highbinder army at his disposal. According to the editors' commentary, The Medallion wasn't American-made. However, Columbia-TriStar bought the distribution and editing rights worldwide except in Japan, France, and Hong Kong (but these three countries retain the American cut of the film, the only cut ever made).
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The brother shoots and kills the slave trader. Hop Woo is suspected of the crime and visited with blood atonement by the Hip-y-tong. The brother and Donovan, who loves the Chinese-American girl, rescue her from an underground passage below Chinatown, and Donovan shoots dead the highbinders. Maggie, the mother has committed suicide.
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The hatchet that the highbinders used was somewhat modified from what one usually thinks of a hatchet, as they would cut much of the handle off just enough to have a good grip, and cut a hole into it.Dillon, Hatchet Men, p. 107 The hatchet men were also known to use many different materials as body armor, with varying success.
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The Almighty Dollar is a 1910 silent film comedy short produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company. The film has an early appearance by Harry Myers and was released in split-reel form with The Highbinders. A print is preserved in the Library of Congress collection.Catalog of Holdings The American Film Institute Collection and The United Artists Collection at The Library of Congress (<-book title) p.
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The original cut was meant to be around 108 minutes. The plot of the film explained Snakehead's crime syndicate of human smuggling, the deaths that occurred from it, and his desire to create an army of Highbinders to aid his organization. These details were all cut to focus on the medallion. As a result of several scene cuts, some original dialogue was overdubbed, including a small amount of Cantonese dialogue.
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Hugh Thompson (born May 20, 1887) was an American actor of the silent film era. He appeared in over 50 feature films and film shorts during the 1910s and 1920s. Some of his more prominent roles were in 1917's Barnaby Lee, 1918's Queen of the Sea and The Forbidden Path, The Woman Under Oath in 1920, and 1922's The Half Breed. His final role was in a supporting role in the 1926 film, The Highbinders.
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Tongs associated with importing women to America fought over territories and profits. The "tong wars" of the 19th and early 20th centuries were often based on control of these women. In the early years the tongs employed "hatchet men" or boo how doy (), also called highbinders, as hired killers to fight the street battles that ensued over turf, business and women.Dillon, Richard H. The Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco's Chinatown.
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He worked with D. W. Griffith on such films as The Birth of a Nation (1915), where he played two parts, one in blackface, and Intolerance (1916). He also played a Chinese role in Tod Browning's The Highbinders. At this time, Pallette had a slim, athletic figure, a far cry from his portly build later in his career. He starred as the slender sword-fighting swashbuckler Aramis in Douglas Fairbanks' 1921 version of The Three Musketeers, one of the great smash hits of the silent era.
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The hatchet men, also known to outsiders of the Chinatown as highbinders (so called as they would bind their queue on top of their heads to prevent them from being grabbed by an opponent), were the salaried soldiers of the tongs. These soldiers most likely were from the Chinese lower classes, as many were uneducated and less "motivated" to become a law-abiding citizen of any country. Allegedly, 20% of each of the tong's membership population was said to be the professional soldiers.Dillon, Hatchet Men, p.
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Ross Alley was also notorious for highbinders and gambling dens in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Several establishments in "the stronghold for gambling dens" featured iron doors, which were banned by local ordinance in 1889. In several instances, the Chinese population was victimized by people impersonating police officers, and in at least one instance, police protection of gambling led to the removal of an officer. According to a 1901 article, "Ross [A]lley is thought to be the spot in San Francisco where the souls of the dead can most easily come and where the evil spirits are forbidden to exercise their powers".
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The Hip Yee and Kwong Duck tongs were both reported to have had a morally decent and good organization, with the Hip Yee tong starting out to protect slave-girls from criminal activities (although the Hip Yee highbinders were said to have started the organized slave-girl importation in 1852 as well), and the Kwong Duck tong's creation was motivated by originally good men to fight the illegal activities of the Hip Yee tong.Dillon, Hatchet Men, p. 125 Regardless, both tongs and for that matter every tong created during this period eventually turned to criminal activities. The major markets that brought such a rapid rise in the tongs were, as mentioned before, the fan-tan gambling halls and lotteries, opium dens, and the most important to the tongs, the slave-girl (prostitution) houses.
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