Along with
Hell's Hinges
and
Tumbleweeds
,
Blue Blazes Rawden
is currently among the most readily available of William S. Hart's westerns. Hart, of course, plays the title character, a brawny lumberjack who enters into a poker game with a deceptively mild-looking English gambler named Ladyfingers Hilgard (Robert McKim). The stakes are Hilgard's gambling emporium -- and, it is implied, the Englishman's girlfriend Babette Du Fresne (Maud George). Accusing each other of cheating, Rawden and Hilgard decide to settle their differences with their six-shooters. And this is only the beginning of the picture, which by the final reel has incorporated practically all of the familiar William S. Hart elements, including the self-sacrificial redemption of the "good bad man" hero.