Silent Adventure Classics: The Sky Rider (1928)/The Call of the Wilderness (1926) (DVD)

After Rin Tin Tin saved Warner Brothers from bankruptcy, several independent studios found lookalike dogs and built movies around them, hoping audiences wouldn't know the difference. They had names like Thunder, Champion, Leader, Ranger, Dynamite, Lightning, Tarzan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Sandow, Strongheart, and Peter the Great. These animal acts were usually paired with a clueless young man in need of moral fortification. THE SKY RIDER (1928): John Wilson, king of commercial aviation, is ready to retire. Suspicious of his greedy nephew Joseph, Wilson instead hands the company over to his son Dick, a daredevil young pilot. Infuriated by his disinheritance, Joseph places a bomb inside Dick's plane. It explodes in mid-air, leaving the fearless aviator near death. As Dick fights for his life on the operating table, Joseph stages a daring kidnapping of his uncle, intending to make him change his will at gunpoint. Dick must survive this crisis if he is to save his father and preserve the fu