Must-Watch List in the Vein of It's a Great Life: Cult Guide

Dir: Edward LeSaint

When famous opera singer Elinore Duane undergoes an operation on her throat, she has a series of ether-induced visions. In one, she is transported to ancient Rome where she appears as a much-admired woman in love with Paul, a young heretic, and at odds with Lutor, the high priest. To save her love, she poisons Lutor with her ring. After several other visions which involve variations on this love triangle, Elinore awakens to discover that Lutor is actually her doctor, Sascha Jaccard, and that Paul is the son of a friend who has come to visit the recovering prima donna.

Dir: Edward F. Cline

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Convict 13 perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

A young golfer is mugged by an escaped convict and finds himself in a prison where he foils a jailbreak.

Dir: Edward F. Cline

It's all there - the deserted mother with her child in her arms, followed all around by a fiendish wicked snow storm, the heroine lashed to the rails by the scoundrelly villain, the young woman fastened to the buzz saw of a lumber mill and about to be reduced to mincemeat. And hist. The wicked villain with a mustache and cigarette - the noble hero and the persecuted heroine. There are two drunks sitting in one of the boxes of the theater, who get so excited that they insist upon helping out the action of the melodrama. In the middle of the play, the head scene shifter gets jealous of his wife, who is the leading woman of the show, and drags her from the stage. Nothing, if not resourceful, Ben rushes down into the audience and kidnaps a beautiful young woman to play the leading woman's role. Then comes a startling climax, when the snow storm is shut down by a queer accident. And an equally tragic catastrophe jazzes up the ocean when a storm and a submarine play at cross purposes.

Dir: Edgar Jones

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of East Lynne with Variations perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

A mail-order bride arrives at a Maine lumber camp but doesn't like her prospective husband.

Dir: Edward F. Cline

A young couple who live next to each other in tenement apartments do everything they can to be together despite of their feuding families.

Dir: Edward F. Cline

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of In the River perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.

Dir: Bruno Ziener

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.

Dir: Edward F. Cline

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Neighbors perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Two inventive farmhands compete for the hand of the same girl.

Dir: Edward F. Cline

Heretofore running a shoe store has been considered a quiet, respectable business, but Ben and his partner make the interior of their emporium of fashionable footwear look like the finish to a feature number at a smart cabaret. They also put new life and the joy of winning into a gambling joint, until they are discovered cheating. This so shocks the proprietor and his regular customers that they lose their faith in human nature and send for the police. And so the merry game is kept up.

Dir: F. Martin Thornton

In Paris an orphan cartoonist loves a man with a mad wife, who dies in time to prevent her marriage to a jilted Comte.