- The year is 1927.
- Close-up on the contorted face of a man who's being electrocuted by some kind of ancient medical device that shoots lightning bolts through your ears. Egads!
- The music is foreboding. The man's mouth is moving but his screams are inaudible.
- The intertitle speaks for him: "I won't talk!" it reads. "I won't say a word!!!"
- Cut to: the men who are torturing him from behind a pane of glass, begging him to "speak!"
- Suddenly the camera pans out to show that the whole scene is actually playing on a movie screen, at a theater — the old kind with a classy crowd dressed to the nines and an orchestra in front, performing the film score.
- The crowd reacts boisterously (gasping, laughing) as the man on screen reunites with his dog, dons a mask, flashes a hundred-watt smile, retrieves the damsel in distress (decked out in furs, what else?) from the vault where she has been stashed, and makes a grand escape.