AllMovie

Reading the official studio synopses of such films as In Bad makes one wish that more of director Edward Sloman's silent films had survived. William Russell plays a ne'er-do-well who is forced to work his way back into the good graces of his family and his sweetheart (Francella Billington). Russell heads westward, where he spends the next several reels prospecting for gold. His full regeneration comes about when he defeats a band of outlaws and discovers a valuable treasure "South of the Border." Though obviously filmed nowhere near the Yucatan (where most of the story was set), In Bad was redeemed by director Sloman's acute sense of pictorial composition and his ability to conjure up suspense where none really existed.