Auf Leben und Tod (1930)

Eddie, a muscular, powerful circus performer, sees one night how a stranger climbs through an open window into a mansion. Eddie follows him and discovers that the burglar is young Paul, the brother of the wealthy heiress Eveline, whom he intends to relieve of her jewelry and money. Paul is addicted to opium and regularly needs more money to obtain his drugs. A certain van Straaten, an unscrupulous sort, is responsible for Paul’s addiction. His plan is to get his hands this way on the considerable fortune belonging to Paul and his sister. As the film’s title suggests, Eddie now has to put all his daring, fighting spirit, and strength to use in a life-or-death struggle—at one point he is even chained up and, like an escape artist, simply tears the chains out of the masonry—to fight his way through for Paul and put a stop to van Straaten, who, to make matters worse, is also Eveline’s pushy suitor.