Its kinky title notwithstanding, Beauty in Chains was a pleasant costume romance, adapted from a novel by B. Perez Glados. The scene is a sanguinary Spanish village, where Rosarito (Ella Hall), granddaughter of village matriarch Doña Perfecta (Ruby LaFayette), has been betrothed in marriage to "city boy" Pepe Rey Don Jose (Emory Johnson), a man she has never met. The audience is led to believe that Rosarito will balk at this arrangement, but once she meets Pepe, she likes what she sees and goes through with the wedding. Upon meeting Doña Perfecta, however, Pepe alienates the old lady by making pointed comments about the village's lack of enterprise. Doña Perfecta calls off the wedding and even hires a local hooligan to bump off the troublesome Pepe. But our hero quickly and easily trounces his would-be assassin and elopes with Rosarito, thereby injecting a soupcon of adventure into the otherwise laid-back proceedings.
by Hal Erickson
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