A Chicago gangster is pleasantly surprised by violent crime in London. When he discovers crooks are after a mysterious package, and murder an innocent match-seller for it, he turns detective.
Madeleine steals a string of pearls in Paris and uses American engineer Tom, who is driving on his vacation to Spain, to get the pearls out of France. But getting the pearls back from him proves to be difficult without falling in love.
It is England in the 1830s. London's dockside is teeming with ships and sailors who have made their fortune in foreign lands. Sweeney Todd, a Fleet Street barber, awaits the arrival of men whose first port of call is for a good, close shave. For most it will be the last time they are seen alive. Using a specially designed barber's chair, Sweeney Todd despatches his victims to the cellar below, where he robs them of their new found fortunes and chops their remains into small pieces. Meanwhile, Mrs Lovett is enjoying a roaring trade for her popular penny meat pies.
Gabby, the waitress in an isolated Arizona diner, dreams of a bigger and better life. One day penniless intellectual Alan drifts into the joint and the two strike up a rapport. Soon enough, notorious killer Duke Mantee takes the diner's inhabitants hostage. Surrounded by miles of desert, the patrons and staff are forced to sit tight with Mantee and his gang overnight.
Allen Colby, heir to a huge fortune, is presumed drowned after an ocean liner sinks off the coast of Honolulu. Mysteriously, Colby reappears at his mansion only to be murdered soon after. When his body is discovered during a seance, everyone in attendance becomes a suspect, and it's up to Chan to find the murderer before he or she strikes again.
Ted Clark rescues pickpoket Danny from a mob, and restores Danny's loot, a pocketbook, to its owner Ann Dawson. She is carrying a letter that proves her brother, who is on death row, is innocent and Jim Grant is the guilty party. Ted and Danny help her escape from Grant's henchmen. They have several narrow escapes while on their way to give the proof to the Governor.
G-Man Ted Riley is ordered to investigate happenings at Diamond Island, where a bogus Major Gray is reported engaged in manufacturing a new brand of secret gas for his own purposes. Riley blows up his motor boat just off the island and is picked up by Gray's men. On the island he discovers chemist Professor Baker (John Cowell) and his daughter, Anne, are held captive by Major Gray.
When a young man is befriended by a gambling ship operator and made a partner in the business, he becomes involved in a police manhunt after he covers up a murder committed by his new partner.
Bob Holt's last journey as a Railway engine driver before his retirement, a journey disturbed by his distress at leaving the Railway, and his suspicions of the relationship between his wife and his fireman. Aboard the train are a pair of pickpockets, a honeymoon couple, a drunk, a temperance pamphleteer and a host of familiar types, all more-or-less bizarre in characteristically English ways. Bob takes an unexpected course of action, and the characters start interacting in varied and unexpected ways. When, at last, the train stops, all has been resolved, but not as might have been expected at the beginning of the journey.
A crazed scientist invents a serum that induces a catatonic state in anyone who gets the injection. He uses the serum to paralyze his enemies, in order to bury them alive.
A counterfeiter gives up her life of crime and goes straight. She gets a job in a bank, but the members of her former gang hear about it and try to blackmail her into helping them rob the bank.