ROYAL PICTURES

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2304, 19 July 1921, Page 3

ROYAL PICTURES

Big Bill Hart is some scrapper, as everybody knows, but in his new Paramount picture, “The Testing Block,” to be shown to-night, he is a veritable super-man. A straying minstrel band, with a lovely girl who plays the violin, winds through the trails of the California Sierras in the days of gold, Mr Hart is chic! <>l a bandit gang. They force the players to entertain them in the heart of the redwood forest. The halfsavage outlaws are avid in their desire to capture the girl, and “Sierra” Bill forces them to fight him, one by one, for Hie right, to claim her. He heats them all, and Then, himself half crazed, seeks the girl and forces her to marry him. That is the beginning of a story of human tragedy and joy, which unfolds in a mighty sequence of compelling incidents.

On Wednesday evening the fascinating romance of an English giri and a French officer, “The Rocks of Valpre,” one of the most popular of Ethel M. Dell’s stories, will He featured. In a cave at Valpro, Bertrand de Montville was perfecting the invention of a new gun breechblock. Fate brought Chris Wyndham to Valpre, and one day they met on the rocks. She was yet a child, hut he worshipped her a- man was made to worship woman from the beginning. Cruel circumstance tore them apart, and years later they met in London, hut was betrothed to another. The old love rekindled, hut Montville, an oflicci* and a gentleman, remained staunch and true. And then fate dealt another blow. A gripping climax U here presented, and holds your interest to the last. Every incident from this great novel is reproduced in a wonderful and convincing manner. Prices, 2s and Is, plus tax.