“The Mystery of the Leaping Fish has become a cult film because of the way it deals with cocaine. D.W.Griffith is supposed to have written the story, although the films credit it to Tod Browning. Perhaps if he had directed it, the result might have made more sense. His costar was Bessie Love (who would later star in a more significant drug film, Human Wreckage). Alma Rubens, who became a drug addict in real life, also played in it. Intended as a parody of Sherlock Holmes, with Fairbanks playing a crackpot detective called Coke Ennyday, it resembled nothing so much as a home movie shot in the style of Mack Sennett. What makes it of interest today is the fact that anyone could find anything funny in the subject of drug addiction. Coke Enneday injects himself frequently and literally vibrates with glee. Fairbanks was hyperactive anyway; D.W.Griffith thought him afflicted with St.Vitus’s dance and felt he belonged at Keystone. This picture looks like some kind of awful revenge, for it was released as a two-reeler under Keystone band. Surprisingly, it was made twice, once by William Christy Cabanne, who was fired, and then by John Emerson, who reshot the entire picture with assistance from Tod Browning. Anita Loos wrote the title.”

(Kevin Brownlow, Behind the Mask of Innocence, Jonathan Cape, London, 1990)