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Lizards in Movies   Big Stakes (1922)   Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.   This is a silent Western. American cowboy Jim (the foreman of the "Crazy Snake" ranch) chases a steer over the border into Mexico where he meets and falls for a Mexican woman - senorita Mercedes - who is engaged to a captain in the Mexican army. When the captain finds out that the two have been secretly meeting, he tells his men to follow him and to bring the "reptil diablo" a Gila Monster in a wire cage. The captain apprehends Jim and his fat sidekick "Skinny" and tells Mercedes that they will die from the Gila Monster, whose bite is deadly. But Jim convinces the captain that he would be a coward if he didn't give them a chance to live by betting on which jumping bean will be the first to jump out of a circle. The stakes being that the winner lives and gets Mercedes and the loser must let the Gila Monster bite him. Jim wins and the captain opens the cage ready to die to honor his part of the bet but Jim shoots the lizard after seeing that the captain is an honorable man. Then he shows that he's a good buy by telling Mercedes that she should choose between the two men.