A short film depicting the execution of Mary, Queen of the Scots. Mary is brought to the execution block and made to kneel down with her neck over it. The executioner lifts his axe ready to bring it down. After that frame Mary has been replaced by a dummy. The axe comes down and severs the head of the dummy from the body. The executioner picks up the head and shows it around for everyone else to see. One of the first camera tricks to be used in a movie.
The hanging of child murderer, William Carr
A depiction in the hanging of Edward Heinson, an assumed criminal assault convict in Jacksonville, Florida.
“A file of Spanish soldiers line up the Cubans against a blank wall and fire a volley. The flash of rifles and drifting smoke make a very striking picture.” (Edison film catalog)
This early docudrama shows Auburn Prison and recreates the electrocution of Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President McKinley of the United States.
A child murderess is led to her execution.
In a public place in Constantinople at the corner of a bazaar, the executioner is seated upon a stone and is resting from his daily labors while eating a crust of bread. Suddenly there come running into the place a lot of Turkish men and women preceding some Turkish policemen, who drag along four prisoners in chains. The policemen shut up the four prisoners in the pillory. Their four heads stick up through the huge plank, which is provided with four openings. One of the policemen urges the executioner to decapitate the prisoners. He accordingly seizes a mighty sabre and cuts off by a single stroke the four heads, which roll upon the ground.
Japanese pose as coolies, blow up a train, are caught and shot.
The Spanish Dancer is the story of Maritana, a Romani girl who dances in courtyards and even tells people's fortunes. Despite her lowly position, Maritana wishes to be a Countess. Her ambitions are realized when she meets the handsome Count Don Cesar de Bazán, if only the King of Spain would stay out of their way!
In Czarist Russia, a young peasant boy is sent to Siberia for insulting the Grand Duchess. Released years later, he joins the fighting to overthrow the royal family. The entire royal family is condemned to death when fighting ceases.
A condemned murderer, in the process of being executed, relives the events that led to his being sentenced to die in the electric chair. Told in flashback, we witness a sleazy dancehall girl (Vivienne Osborne) dupe a high rise riveter (Edward G. Robinson) into marriage so she can live off of him. But when he loses his job and his marbles, she ends up supporting him with money from her side man--and misses no opportunity to rub it in his face that she's now supporting him in his emasculated state. As the animosity grows and things get more and more unbearable, he is eventually driven to desperate measures.
An ex-con uses his street smarts to become a successful photojournalist.
A convicted murderer has been sentenced to death in the electric chair. He decides to spill the name of the man who hired him, but just before he does he's killed by a poison dart. A police detective and a pretty young newspaper reporter team up to find out the identity of the man behind the killings.
An insane surgeon's obsession with an actress leads him to replace her wounded pianist husband's hands with the hands of a knife murderer--hands which still have the urge to throw knives.
Jánošík has been topic of many Slovak and Polish legends, books and films. According to the legend, he robbed nobles and gave the loot to the poor. The legend were also known in neighboring Silesia, the Margraviate of Moravia and later spread to the Kingdom of Bohemia. The actual robber had little to do with the modern legend, whose content partly reflects the ubiquitous folk myths of a hero taking from the rich and giving to the poor. However, the legend was also shaped in important ways by the activists and writers in the 19th century when Jánošík became the key highwayman character in stories that spread in the north counties of the Kingdom of Hungary (present Slovakia) and among the local Gorals and Polish tourists in the Podhale region north of the Tatras.
Down-on-his-luck John Ellman is framed for a judge's murder. After he's convicted and sentenced to death, witnesses come forth and prove his innocence. But it was too late for a stay to be granted and Ellman is executed. A doctor uses an experimental procedure to restore him to life, though the full outcome is other than expected.
The recently widowed Mary Stuart returns to Scotland to reclaim her throne but is opposed by her half-brother and her own Scottish lords.
The tragic story of Lady Jane Grey, the young queen who reigned in England for nine days before she was executed.
A respected citizen with secret ties to the local mob is faced with revealing his criminal connections to save two innocent people from execution
When a prisoner on Death Row is "accidentally" killed just before his execution, a reporter smells something fishy...