Bruce Loeb on Piano "Boris Barnet (1902-1965) worked in a variety of genres: satirical comedies, thrillers, social dramas, period reconstructions. In the best of these (e.g., Girl with the Hatbox, House on Trubnaya Square), we find very distinctive qualities: a love for eccentric, way-out characters, a skill in staging physical action (Barnet was a boxer in his early days), and an ability to use specific locations as vivid backdrops for his stories...(His) women avoid the coy and cliched stereotypes (and are) usually perky, punchy and confident...All these qualities are evident in his first film Miss Mend (co-directed with Fedor Otsep), a wonderful three-part serial which...fuses elements of Fairbanks, Feuillade and Lang with brilliant location shooting in city and countryside. See how Miss Mend and her intrepid reporter friends grapple with the Mad Doctor, hectic chases and transformations, deadly play with poisoned apples and dangerous gases...The film's prolific visual invention and amusingly convoluted plotting take in a Nosferatu-like body in a coffin, mysterious encounters in a chateau, kidnappings on a jetty; and culminate, in the third part, in an extended, accelerating pursuit involving cars and horses. Barnet exploits all the serial conventions and improves on them, winding down to a charming, poetic epilogue."--John Gillett, National Film Theatre, London