Film 103 in the Hazards of Helen series
Dick Benton - the Express Messenger
The Express Agent
The vote stands a tie on the railroad bill that will mean ruin to the Western line should it pass the State Legislature. By getting Senator Brown, who is aboard a liner quarantined in the bay, to the Capitol the day will be saved. The road superintendent takes a daring chance and aboard a motorboat succeeds in smuggling the Senator ashore and to a Western special which speeds off towards the Capitol of the neighboring State.
Helen, the telegraph operator at Lone Point, receives a telegram for Sydney Wayne, superintendent of the Graham Gravel plant, advising him that the plant has changed ownership and that Stanton Grey accompanied by his daughter Edith, is on his way to Lone Point to inspect the property. Wayne is startled because he has gambled away the company's money and realizes that his books will not balance. Fortune appears to favor him when Grey is carried into the station unconscious as the result of an automobile accident. He extracts Grey's wallet from his pocket but Cole, the gambler, who has trailed Wayne gets a photograph of him in the act. With the photographic evidence, the gambler tries to blackmail Wayne.
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.
Claim jumper Dave Marco and his boss Earl Foster, a crooked investment broker, hire chemist Ralph Brandon to falsify papers that a certain worthless mine is valuable then convince Ralph's mother to invest all her money in the mine. Ralph’s sister Holly meets Jack Mason, whose mine is actually valuable though not yet profitable, and they fall for each other. Once Mrs. Brandon finds out she has been duped, though forced into silence by the threat of having Ralph’s malfeasance exposed, and Marco attempts to jump Jack’s claim events come to a head until the happy conclusion.
In a scuffle between the assistant foreman and a discharged employee at the mountain construction camp the latter's revolver is fired, bringing about a dynamite explosion that severely injures many of the men.
Burkett, superintendent of the Western Railway, opposes his daughter's friendship for Dick Benton, one of the company's lawyers, favoring the latter's fellow-worker, Guy Warren. Warren succeeds in putting through a scheme which results in Dick's discharge. The lovers plan to elope and enlist the aid of Helen. But Eleanor's father learns of the move and wires ahead to police officials to board her train and arrest her while he follows in his special. By a daring leap from a handcar to the train Helen succeeds in warning Eleanor of her peril, but is too late, and Helen and Dick are forced to stand idly by while Burkett starts on the return trip in his special, carefully guarding Eleanor.
Agents of a foreign power are seeking to get possession of the plans of a new aeroplane motor invented by Dick Benton. Under cover of darkness they succeed in their scheme and are escaping in their automobile when it plunges over an embankment near Lone Point.
Jud Hendricks, foreman of the construction camp, is being blackmailed by Gypsy Joe, who knows of a dark page in the Hendricks' past. Hendricks and Tom Rasom are rivals for the favor of Helen, with Tom in the lead. The latter, an engineer, is about to take his train out when he finds Gypsy Joe hiding in a boxcar.
Learning that the driver of the Comet car has been disabled on the eve of the big race, Sinton, a gambler, bets heavily on its rival. But his plans go awry when Gordon, the owner of the Comet car, meets Naroche, a celebrated French driver, and engages him to pilot the racer.
After accidentally killing an opponent in the ring, a professional wrestler takes a job at a group home for youth offenders. But when a psychopath wearing a wrestling mask begins butchering the teenage residents, their rehabilitation will become a no-holds-barred battle for survival. Originally filmed in 1994 but completed in 2019.
Greggs, returning from abroad with a large consignment of precious stones, thwarts the first attempt of Gentleman Joe and his accomplice to rob him at his hotel, but they follow him aboard the train the when he is alone on the observation platform they attack him, and a struggle ensues in which Greggs is finally thrown to the ground from the speeding train. Helen, riding through the hills in an auto, comes upon him before Joe and his pal can alight from the train, Greggs gives her the diamonds and tells her to speed away and rush help back to take care of his injuries.
Helen, discharged by the superintendent without justification, comes to the rescue when a flat car, loaded with dynamite, is tearing to certain destruction down the grade, bearing the mischievous son of the superintendent.
Escaping after an early morning bank robbery, Gentleman Joe and his pal succeed in boarding a freight train headed toward Lone Point. Fearing rightly that a warning has been sent down the line, they secrete their loot in a box car, and, after noting its number, alight and seek cover until after the pursuit has cooled.
Helen, by a courageous leap from a motorcycle, reaches the burning boxcar in which the detectives are imprisoned and succeeds in applying the brakes in time to bring it to a stop and save them from almost certain death.
Dick Benton, a young attorney of the railroad, is on his way to the Capitol to deliver evidence involving Riggs in a conspiracy arising out of a fight with the railroad over a franchise. At Lone Point he learns that by leaving the package to be picked up by the express it will reach the Governor sooner than he can bring it on the local.
Stallings' plot to spoil the demonstration of Dick Benton's newly invented safety stop for trains seems certain of success when the locomotive is sent running wild down the tracks. Helen saves the day by climbing out on a wire stretching across the tracks and dropping to the speeding engine.
On a visit to the State Prison with Superintendent Melvin of the construction camp near Lone Point. Helen gains the friendship of Butler, a former telegrapher who had been wrongfully convicted on circumstantial evidence. Butler is soon to be released and Helen promises to aid him.