Editor's Top Picks Sharing the Atmosphere of Broken Barriers: Cult Guide

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Mercedes Murphy and her partner, Slick Barney, run a saloon and dance hall in the tough town of Paradise, Nevada. While Mercedes is a hard-nosed businesswoman, she has a soft spot for her sister Olive, with whom she lives. One day a preacher, Rev. McGregor, who is determined to "reform" Paradise, sets up his church right next to the saloon. Mercedes is at first opposed to the reverend, but is eventually won over by his sermons and closes the dance hall. However, she soon discovers that Olive's "virtue" may no longer be so virtuous--and she suspects that the minister might be responsible for this.

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Mark Horn, once a lowly shoeshine boy, grows up to become a millionaire on Wall Street, but because of his experiences as a youth, still harbors a grudge against the rich. His money and position gain him entrance to high society, and he decides to drive wealthy Wayne Madison to ruin, agreeing to save Madison only if he lets Mark marry his daughter Viva. However, things don't turn out quite the way Mark intended.

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An Italian immigrant and his sweetheart search for a better life in America, but the harsh realities of life in the slums of New York City lay waste to their hopes and dreams.

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Christ takes on the form of a pacifist count to end a senseless war.

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The bandit Jim Stokes, wanting to go straight and settle down with his new bride, strikes a bargain with the sheriff for his freedom.

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A stagecoach robber falls in love with a saloon girl. However, she falls for a pastor, who converts her; she marries him. The robber is so impressed by this that he decides to turn over a new leaf. However, a shady gambler sets his sights on the former saloon girl, and the robber has to protect her from his advances.

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Japanese diplomat Tokoramo ( Sessue Hayakawa ), on a mission to Paris, begins a love affair with chorus girl, Helene ( Gladys Brockwell ), who subsequently rejects her American fiance, Richard Bernisky. When the Japanese discover the affair, they try to force Tokoramo to end it, but Helene refuses to stop visiting him. One night, during one of her visits, Bernisky comes to Tokoramo's apartment and, while Helene hides, rebukes her to her lover. After Bernisky leaves, Tokoramo orders Helene out, but when he realizes his love for her, he calls her back. Suddenly, she rejects and insults him to the point that he strangles her. Tokoramo wants to confess his crime, but he must complete his work, and so his countrymen sacrifice a boy, Hironari, who pleads guilty to the murder and eventually is executed. In the end, Tokoramo also dies and his colleagues burn his valuable papers in order to protect Japan.

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An American sailor falls in love with a fisherman's daughter and convinces her that Jesus is more powerful than the gods who have cursed her.

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A parson, in love with a girl who is betrothed to a rich Count in her family's hope of partaking in the Count's fortune, uses his pulpit in a scheme to shame the family into allowing the girl to break the engagement and marry him instead.

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A young Italian immigrant girl, uneducated and superstitious, finds an abandoned baby on the stairs of her tenement, with a note attached explaining the baby is illegitimate. A young newspaper reporter, whom the girl knows from waiting on him at the restaurant where she works, reads the note for her. But the police arrest her, at no evidence whatsoever other than possession of the baby, for kidnapping. She refuses to tell them the baby was abandoned and fatherless, because she was herself, and confesses, in order to save the baby from being branded a bastard, that she stole it. The reporter goes to the jail and elicits the truth from her. And then proposes to her and adopts the baby.