Trapped by the Mormons

Under flickering nitrate dusk, a caravan of starched collars and scripture descends upon Coney-bright London, carting celestial marriage licenses like slave-deeds. Elderly apostle Isoldi Keene, eyes twin dead suns behind rimless spectacles, stalks chorus-girl Nora Prescott across pleasure-palace arcades, promising her consumptive mother a miracle if the virgin will merely submit to Zion’s harem arithmetic. Once the veil lifts, Nora finds herself spirited through night-trains to a polygamous rookery where wives are numbered, not named, their wedding rings soldered into a single iron chain. Meanwhile, cub reporter Jim Lacey—half drunk on ink fumes and Jack-the-Ripper headlines—sniffs blood behind the elders’ smiles; he races the Thames fog, telegram bells, and a pocket-crucifix that doubles as a lock-pick. In a salt-cellar cellar beneath a tabernacle, Jim unearths baptismal fonts rigged with trapdoors, each plunge a portal to white-slavery auctions disguised as prayer circles. The climax erupts during a lantern-slide sermon: as the congregation chants Hosanna, Jim crashes the balcony, swinging a kerosene lamp like a comet, exposing ledger-books that list every abducted debutante beside her purchase price in cattle. Keene’s final grin—frozen in a close-up so tight you can count the pores drinking condemnation—lingers as the celluloid itself seems to ignite, turning the screen into a smoldering tract against theocracy’s velvet chokehold.