David Marshall Williams is sent to a prison farm where he works in the tool shop and eventually develops the precursor of the famous M-1 Carbine automatic rifle used in World War II.

Young man comes home to get ready to take over the family company, only to find that his father has been corrupted by power. In addition, he falls for the daughter of one of his father's poverty-stricken workers.

Behind the locked doors of a mental institution resides crooked politico Judge Drake, free from prosecution so long as he pretends to be crazy. To get the goods on Drake, private detective Ross Stewart has himself committed to the asylum as a patient. Meanwhile, reporter Kathy Lawrence, posing as Stewart's wife, acts as his liaison to the outside world.

College prof Peter Boyd tries to salvage his professional and personal reputation by using a lab chimp to prove that environment trumps heredity in behavioral development.

Ralph Cotter, a ruthless criminal, escapes violently from a farm prison. Then, he seduces a dead inmate’s sister, gets back quickly into the crime business, faces corrupt local cops who run the city’s underworld and meets a powerful tycoon’s whimsical daughter.

Story follows the rise and subsequent fall of the notorious head of a New York crime family, who decides to testify against his pals in order to avoid being killed by his fellow cohorts.

Palestine, under the rule of Rome. Salome, daughter of Herodias and both niece and stepdaughter of King Herod, becomes infatuated with the prophet John the Baptist, who publicly denounces the depravity of the royal family and proclaims the arrival of a new messiah. (Film presumed lost.)