After breaking a mirror in his home, superstitious Max tries to avoid situations which could bring bad luck, but in doing so causes himself the worst luck imaginable.

Tarzan spurns the love of La, Queen of Opar. When he isn't trying to keep the Bolshevik Rokoff and Clayton (pretender to the Greystoke estate) from reaching Opar, he is attacked simultaneously by two lions, dropped into a pit when a volcano splits the ground, nearly sacrificed by sun worshipers, and so on.

Frivolous young Marie de Severac is frightened into following a more virtuous path, when her father relates a story in which an equally frivolous woman is entombed alive. The movie was Rex Ingram’s directorial debut, and he later remade the film as Trifling Women in 1922. Black Orchids is considered to be a lost film.

At a three-ring circus, 'Spangles' Delancy, a beautiful bareback horse rider, falls in love with a wanted man, Dick Radley, who uses the circus as a hideout. The show's owner Big Bill Bowman also falls in love with Spangles-- But only one man can have her.

Leon de Severac is fed up with his daughter Jacqueline, who is constantly seducing men. Hoping to discourage her from her flirtatious behavior, he tells her the story of Zareda, an attractive fortune teller who is having an affair with Ivan de Maupin.

During the great drought on the South African veldt, bitterness erupts between the von Haagen and Townsend families when they quarrel over a cattle spring. Nevertheless, a romance grows between Gretel von Haagan and Ned Townsend, who, to escape their families' opposition, marry and leave for the interior.

This is another comedy, in which trick photography plays a large part. It is a travesty on the temperance question, siding with the dry element. On the refusal of the Governor to sign a bill in favor of the liquor interest, the political boss tries to force the executive to his will. The Governor, after a series of thrilling experiences, thwarts the efforts of the politicians. The latter calls on Lady Baffles, who impersonates the Governor's wife and secures the executive's signature to the bill. Detective Duck, however, captures the politicians in a clever manner and beats Lady Baffles at her own game. (Moving Picture World Synopsis)

An old maid receives a telegram from the administrator of a distant uncle's will, stating that he is shipping her share of the inheritance in a box. When the box arrives, the old maid discovers it contains a full-sized orangoutang, which escapes from the box and causes her no end of trouble.

H. Oboe Rhodes, a "knight of the road," limps into a large city with the idea of appeasing his hunger. His first quest is the welcoming doors of a saloon in which a large free lunch is advertised.

Prof. Alonzo Bozzle, an eccentric zoologist, has taken up the study of evolution as promulgated by Darwin and is pondering especially on the idea that there is a "missing link." One night he dreams that he is an explorer and that he has just landed upon a foreign shore; he secures the aid of a mahout and an elephant to move his tent and belongings to the jungle, where he will take up the study of trying to find the "missing link."