The Spiked Switch

A lost silent Western short.

The film is about a woman who experiences frightening visions after visiting an insane asylum where one of the inmates claims to be Count Dracula (here following the Hungarian spelling Drakula). She has trouble determining whether the inmate's visions are real or merely nightmares.

A lost film based on the 'Reign of Terror', a real-life series of several dozen murders committed against the Osage people. 'Tragedies of the Osage Hills' was directed by James Young Deer, the first known Native American film director, and boasted a cast of “hundreds of real Indians.” Described as a dramatic thriller interwoven with a “tender love story”, the film’s premiere in Cushing, Oklahoma occurred just months after the arrest of Ernest Burkhart, the subject of Martin Scorsese’s similarly themed 2023 film 'Killers of the Flower Moon'. The 'Cushing Daily Citizen' described 'Tragedies of the Osage Hills' as having a fictitious ending of the Osage and white men united under an American flag.

On the American frontier in the last decades of the 19th century, Billie is a female cowboy who fights a series of bad men in this film serial.

A man assists a woman to dispose of the body of her stepfather....

A reformed criminal is blackmailed when three girls are murdered.

Publisher John Gillespie faces a financial crisis after his business partner skips town with all the firm's assets. Facing ruin, he reluctantly approaches a wealthy aunt for assistance but is met with a stony-faced refusal.

Vera Souroff, a young Russian girl, is kidnapped off the street and raped by one of three officers of the Czar's guard. The crime is brought to the attention of the Czar, but Vera cannot tell which of the three officers is the guilty man. The Czar orders Count Nicho, the eldest of the three, to marry the girl, turns over the trio’s fortunes to her and imprisons the men. When the revolution breaks out, at the risk of her own life, Vera saves her husband knowing he holds the key to the identity of her attacker.

A mystery novelist meticulously creates an alibi to keep her husband from being convicted of murder.

Braggs, the young western settler, comes into view leading his broncho while he leads his little child on the horse's back. Placing the child on the ground and watering the pony, he takes his knife from his pocket to make an extra hole in the saddle strap. The knife slips and penetrates his wrist, severing an artery. His wife comes to his assistance, makes a tourniquet with strips of her apron, jumps on the broncho's back, bids her husband to care for the child and keep up courage while she rides to town for the doctor.

Just as the bead clerk and his assistants are closing up the jewelry store for the day, a package containing a very costly necklace arrives by special messenger. The large safe deposit vault has been closed for the night and the time clock set. The head clerk is fearful to leave the necklace in the store and so decides to take it home. His actions have been closely watched by one of the junior clerks, with sinister and stealthy glances.