Essential Cult Cinema Drawn from the Same DNA as The Shielding Shadow: Cult Guide

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Pauline, a young maiden, must protect herself from the treacherous "guardian" of her inheritance, who repeatedly plots to murder her and take the money for himself.

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

Sedgewick Blynn is a gigolo--albeit a broke one--determined to marry into money, no matter what it takes. One evening he saves a young child from burning to death in a fire and is hailed as a hero. Young heiress Bessie Morgan falls for him and vows to marry him, but her father puts a stop to the elopement. Soon after, Sedgewick is hit by some news that changes his life forever.

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When Charles Hale is visiting his mistress, Sybil Russell, he is shot in the arm by Sybil's estranged and outraged husband. Hale's daughter, Marjorie, is so shocked to discover in this abrupt fashion her father's philandering that she leaves her wealthy home and goes to the slums to do settlement work. Marjorie, who is engaged to the district attorney, is there placed in a compromising position by her father's assailant, who intends to revenge himself upon the entire Hale family. The district attorney breaks off his engagement with Marjorie. She is reconciled to her father, who has given up Sybil. Mrs. Hale, generally engaged in social activities, returns from a convention and is happily reunited with her husband and daughter. The district attorney learns that Marjorie was the victim of Russell's scheming, and he and Marjorie re-plight their troth.

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

About to be married to a wealthy South African mine owner whom she does not love, Lady Andrea Pellor rebels after she gets her bridal gown on, and seeing an airplane of the beach begs the aviator to take her away. He consents and takes her to his home in the jungle, where she is forced to stay, as the henchmen of his enemy the River Pirate have splintered the propeller and it takes weeks to send for a new one. The hero is a disappointed, disillusioned man seeking to forget and is only known as White Man. He respects her but treats he with a touch of brutality. Lady Andrea contracts jungle fever and her nurses her back to health, and they love each other but her training makes her hide it. The River Pirate pays them a visit and after a fight kidnaps Lady Andrea. White Man goes in his airplane, crashes through the roof of the house and rescues her. He then takes her back to civilization. He follows and turns out to be her brother's war buddy. Finally she confesses her love as he is about to return to the jungle. - Moving Picture World, November 22, 1925.

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Farmer's son David Wingate marries city girl Vianna Courtleigh over his parents' objections. Her father gives him a job with the company; a baby is born to the young couple; but their happiness is marred by David's desire for a quiet domestic life in opposition to Vianna's love of excitement. David's mother comes to live with them when her husband dies. She observes their unhappiness and, after deciding that Vianna is at fault, determines to teach her a lesson. She kidnaps the baby, threatening to keep him until Vianna reforms. Eventually Vianna sees the folly of her ways and seeks forgiveness from David.

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

Oswald Lane is welcomed by his hometown as a war hero and enjoys recounting his adventures to anyone who will listen. He accepts an invitation to stay in the home of his rather colorless brother, Andrew, and is soon not only making love to Martha, the Belgian maid, but is also finding Andrew's wife, Hester, receptive to his flirting. After stealing money entrusted to Andrew by his church, Oswald is on his way out of town when he passes a school fire, rescues several children, and is himself seriously burned. Andrew offers his own skin for grafting, and Oswald directs Hester to return the money.

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John Warriner, facing financial ruin, accepts the proposal of a bootlegger, Benedict, to underwrite the business of illegal wine-selling. His daughter, Angela, takes up with the jazz set and is caught in a raid, at a cafe owned by Benedict. Her former sweetheart, Carl Graham, comes to the rescue and saves her from notoriety, while the family struggles back to its former respectability following Warriner's prison term.

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A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Mothers-in-Law perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Episode 1: "The Serpent Sign" Miss Elaine Dodge, daughter and heiress of the late Taylor Dodge, whose murder has attracted such world-wide attention, has again had her life seriously threatened. It appears that before the death of Perry Bennett, this modern Dr. Jekyll disclosed the hiding-place of his tremendous fortune to one Long Sin, a Chinese adventurer. Bennett formerly owned the house now occupied by Miss Dodge's Aunt Tabby. On a recent visit to her aunt, Miss Dodge was startled in the early hours of the morning by strange noises. Her aunt had already been aware of this condition, but being superstitious, had put it down to ghosts. Miss Dodge, whose life has lately been one continuous round of self-defense, immediately communicated with Craig Kennedy, the scientific detective whose apprehension of the notorious Clutching Hand caused such favorable comment throughout the land. Kennedy has lately come into the possession of Bennett's papers and his keen eye detected at once the similarity of a plan on one of these and the construction of Aunt Tabby's fireplace. A secret passageway was disclosed, through which the redoubtable sleuth and his assistant descended, only to be overcome by gas, and almost murdered by Long Sin, who had entered the passage from the mouth of a cave in an adjoining woods. Miss Dodge, whose nerve has been put to the test in a hundred cases, alarmed by the fumes, and fearing for the lives of her protectors, descended to the passageway where a queer sight met her eyes. Interviewed to-day by a Journal reporter, Miss Dodge said: "1 had no sooner turned an angle in the passageway when I was almost paralyzed by the sight of Long Sin bending over Craig and Mr. Jameson with a long, murderous knife. A safe embedded in the rock had been opened, and the Chinaman had a small strongbox under his arm. Strength born of love then possessed me, and I closed with the heathen in a struggle that lasted for some minutes. Then I felt my strength desert me; the earth seemed to cave in and crumble all around me and [paper will here appear to have been torn.] Episode 2: "The Cryptic Ring" Elaine becomes the innocent purchaser of a cryptic ring stolen from Wu Fang, for the possession of which this desperate heathen will commit murder many times over. The ring is the key to the hidden millions of the late Perry Bennett, alias Clutching Hand, whose sudden death has left the whereabouts of his tremendous fortune a mystery. Wu Fang seeing the ring on Elaine's finger, decides she is the thief, and in an attempt to recover it, lures her to his rooms, where, but for the timely arrival of her lover and protector, Craig Kennedy, she would have met a horrible death. To make good his escape, Wu Fang has to walk a tight-rope over the yawning chasm between two city skyscrapers, and once over, severs the cable on which Kennedy, hand over hand, is following. However, Kennedy is spared to us for many another hair-raising episode, and Elaine, still ignorant of its value, holds the mysterious cryptic ring. Episode 3: "The Watching Eye" In Wu Fang and Long Sin, Craig Kennedy seems to have found an opposition worthy of his tempered metal. With Blaine kidnapped, and no clue to work on but a meaningless cryptic ring, the great scientific detective feels the necessity for his most concentrated thought. Aunt Josephine is the recipient of a huge vase, at the bottom of which Kennedy finds a note from Elaine, saying that she is as yet unharmed, and instructing him, if he would save her, to deliver the cryptic ring that night in an appointed place. Kennedy forges a ring the counterpart of the original, hoping thereby to trick the crafty Chinamen, but out from the side of the gigantic vase peers the crafty eye of the artful heathen, and unknown to him, Kennedy's plans are blighted in the making. Events then follow quickly. Kennedy in trying to double-cross the Tongs, is himself checkmated, and barely escapes with his life when he goes to barter the fake ring for Elaine. The ring, however, proves the "Open Sesame" to the underground treasure vault of the late Clutching Hand, although a small comfort in consideration of Elaine's probable fate. Episode 4: "The Vengeance of Wu Fang" With Elaine in his power, Wu Fang decides on a vengeance more fiendish than he had ever before contemplated. He releases Elaine, telling her that her ultimate punishment will be more frightful than any bodily injury he can now enact. Slowly, and one by one, he tells her, her dearest friends will die, while she will live on in dread apprehension of a fate that will ultimately overtake her. He then places an African Tick, an insect, whose bite means certain death by a lingering fever, in the 'phone receiver in Kennedy's laboratory. Two fake calls are enough to infect both Jameson and Kennedy, and the malignant fever is working in their blood. A specialist is called in who recognizes the symptoms, and prepares the only drug known to counteract this fatal fever. Wu Fang, seeing that he is about to be foiled, intercepts the specialist's message for a nurse, and sends instead a woman of the underworld to carry out his design. This is to infect whatever instruments the doctors are going to use on Kennedy and Jameson, with a virulent poison. His second failure he must needs credit to Elaine, who, arriving at Kennedy's apartment, and seeing Weepy Mary in the guise of a nurse, immediately denounces her to the company as a notorious criminal. Weepy Mary makes her escape in the excitement, and Elaine is installed as nurse of the men to whom she owes her life many times over. Episode 5: "The Saving Circles" A new ally of Wu Fang, the serpent, is an aviator in his plane circling ominously above Craig Kennedy's house. Balanced in the reckless flyer's palm is a bomb of Trodite, the new super-force in explosives. The bird-man looks for a painted circle as the prearranged target for his agent of destruction. He sees it. Straight to the mark goes the infernal death dealer. A startling white flash, a million splinters, an unrecognizable body, and far off on the horizon the fast fading outline of the modern bird of prey. Tense, expectant, shocked, but ultimately triumphant, the detective who harnesses Science in his pursuit of Crime stands watching at the window of his laboratory. He knew about the aeroplane; he knew that the Government had been robbed of the ultra powerful Trodite; he knew of the large white circle that was to mark his house as the object of attack. He knew also that directly across the court one of Wu Fang's henchmen was spying upon him. That's why, in the dead of night, he and his assistant Jameson ascended to the roof where they scrubbed out the fateful circle. That's why they ever so quietly ascended to the roof of the house directly across the court and painted thereon a large white circle the counterpart of the one recently scrubbed off, and that's why, when the detonation came, the fragments of what was once a Chinaman mixed with the fragments of what was once a house, and left Craig Kennedy shaken, but sound. Did you ever see an aeroplane high in the heavens get hit with a steel jacketed shell projected from an armored automobile? Did you ever see a death duel between a terror of the skies and a gun constructed especially to bring it down? Here you see the aeroplane get hit, shiver as though in startled hesitation, make a final desperate struggle to keep afloat, and finally descend in circles, fluttering helpless, like a wounded bird, to the ground. These are some of the awe-inspiring incidents to be seen in this episode. Episode 6: "Spontaneous Combustion" His constant failure to accomplish the death of both Elaine and her protector, Craig Kennedy, makes Wu Fang only the more persistent. Money means nothing to him. His enormous wealth enables him to carry out the most elaborate plans for the death of the hated detective and his fair-haired sweetheart. His followers know no word other than their masters, and his Oriental craftiness enables him to keep well out of the law's reach. He secures a corrupt young girl to help him carry out a plot as fiendish as it is intricate. A fake attack on the girl in front of Elaine's window is excuse for the girl's sad story, which so touches Elaine and her aunt that they take her into their service. Acting on the chemical principle of spontaneous combustion, Wu Fang rigs up a trick chair to hold fast whoever sits in it, and eventually burn its occupant to death. This chair is shipped to the Dodge home, where the new maid receives it and has it put up in the garret, knowing that Elaine will go there shortly to make a selection of her dresses for a charity gift. Meanwhile, Kennedy learns of the joint in which Wu Fang hides himself from the outer world, and disguised as a heathen goes there to smoke a pipe. How he is tricked by the cunning Wu Fang, how he learns of Elaine's imminent peril, how he manages to outwit the crafty Celestial, and rescue Elaine from the most frightful death, is all so graphically pictured on the screen that a word description fails utterly in its purpose. Episode 7: "The Ear in the Wall" Wu Fang, the Chinese master criminal, knows the charm of Elaine, and knows also the danger of her ready wit. He sends her a box of roses, half white and half red, with a fiendish note attached giving her a choice as to who shall die first, Craig Kennedy, or her Aunt Josephine. Elaine is terror-stricken, but Kennedy, all unknown to her, flashes the red roses in the window, as the signal that they have chosen his life as the first to be attempted. The signal is noted and the deadly machinery of Wu Fang set in motion. Kennedy prepares for what he knows will be an ingenious attack. He sprays his hall-mat directly outside his door with a fluid that will photograph whosoever's foot steps on it. Wu Fang, by means of a method of wiring, connects a detectaphone between Kennedy's room and the cellar, where, with bis henchmen, he hears Kennedy's 'phone instructions to police headquarters, ordering a raid on Long Sin and Innocent Inez, the demi-monde. Wu Fang communicates with Long Sin in time to forestall the police, who, when they arrive, find an empty apartment. Kennedy knows that his instructions must have been overheard, so, using a galvaniscope he detects the wiring in the hall, and knows that Wu Fang is listening at the other end of the wire, somewhere nearby. The super-grip of this episode is in how he tricks the wily Oriental at his own game. It's too good to give away in the synopsis. Episode 8: "The Opium Smugglers" Wu Fang, the serpent, kidnaps Elaine's chauffeur, and substitutes in his place one of his henchmen. Craig Kennedy, disguised, searching Chinatown for a trace of Wu Fang, is met by Capt. Brainerd, of the U.S. Secret Service. Brainerd is trying to locate a band of opium smugglers who are going to "pull off a trick" that night. Kennedy points out a passing Chinaman who he knows keeps an opium joint. Together they track him to a dingy apartment, where they find and overpower three Chinamen receiving messages via carrier pigeons from the captain of a tramp sloop. They learn where the sloop is lying, and start out in a revenue cutter to apprehend it. Meanwhile, Wu Fang, through his underling the chauffeur, kidnaps Elaine, whom he intends to slip abroad the smuggler's sloop for shipment to Shanghai, where she is to be sold. The opium is unloaded, and Elaine carried to the ship. Kennedy, Brainerd, and Jameson, after a sharp fight, capture the Chinamen guarding the opium and load the stuff into their boat, before starting to run down the smuggler's ship. Elaine, aboard ship, uses the wireless telephone Kennedy has provided her with, and apprises him of her predicament. She flashes a lantern from the porthole, and Kennedy's boat makes for it. She flees from the Oriental set to guard her and climbs a rope ladder to the dizzy height of the topmast. He follows, a knife in his teeth. She makes a startling leap into the dark waters and he after her. It is a race for life in the fathomless ocean, with the Chinaman gaining at every stroke. He overtakes her and is about to strike when a shot from the racing revenue cutter kills him. Elaine is rescued, and the smuggler's ship captured. Episode 9: "The Tell-Tale Heart" Jameson, Kennedy's assistant, follows Innocent Inez, one of Wu Fang's confederates, to her apartment where he attempts to question her. She touches a knob in the table carvings and an iron bar swings out from the wall behind Jameson and knocks him unconscious. Inez then sends a gypsy confederate to tell Elaine's fortune, and to incidentally bind Elaine's eyes with a handkerchief holding in its seam a vial containing a spark of radium. Inez has been instructed by Wu Fang that the proximity of the radium to Elaine's eyes for three minutes will be sufficient to blind her. Kennedy, informed previously by 'phone of Jameson's destination, follows him and when he arrives is assaulted in the same way as was his assistant. Jameson's glove on the floor attracts his attention and he stoops to pick it up just as the murderous bar swings out from the wall to strike him. Inez is overpowered and Jameson is found. A 'phone message to Inez from Wu Fang reveals Elaine's peril, and Kennedy and Jameson arrive at the Dodge home. They are relieved to discover that Elaine, in binding her eyes, substituted her own handkerchief for the one furnished by the gypsy. Inez is taken to Kennedy's laboratory, where the sphygmograph is applied while Kennedy repeats certain house numbers in the Chinatown district. Wu Fang is known to live in that vicinity and Kennedy realizes that when his house number is repeated, it will cause a quicker pulsation of Inez's blood. Wu Fang, knowing of Inez's predicament, makes a sensational rescue, but Kennedy "has his number," and the next episode promises thrilling situations. Episode 10: "Shadows of War" Wu Fang is approached by secret agents who commission him to secure at any price the model torpedo invented by Craig Kennedy, and in the possession of the United States Government. Wu Fang sets his machinery in motion and awaits results. In the meantime Kennedy, apprised by his agents of Wu Fang's hiding place, goes there with Jameson and by a piece of remarkable strategy, succeeds in capturing him. Wu Fang is wounded and taken to a hospital, where he manages to substitute another Oriental in his place and makes his escape. He meets his henchman coming in from Washington with the stolen torpedo model. The only other model in existence is one in Kennedy's possession, Kennedy is demonstrating its use in a fountain in the Dodge Conservatory. A momentary distraction gives Wu Fang's lieutenant opportunity to steal this model. He starts away with it, but is seen by the butler, who gives chase. Seeing he is likely to be apprehended, he quickly hides the torpedo model in a large flower-pot, and escapes, wounded to a waiting automobile. Kennedy commandeers another car, and follows. In the enthralling game of wits that follows Wu Fang is killed and the whereabouts of Kennedy becomes a matter of serious conjecture. END

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With the help of a private detective, Elaine tries to catch the masked criminal mastermind The Clutching Hand, who has murdered her father.

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Ottilie is forced to wed her cousin despite her love for Dick, the gardener's son. Dick leaves, vowing to return a wealthy man, only to find she has already married. Decades later, their grandchildren meet and fall in love.