AllMovie

An excellent early D.W.Griffith effort, Her Terrible Ordeal was completed the first week of December, 1909, and released six weeks later. Florence Barker heads the cast as the secretary of businessman George Nichols. While depositing the week's profits, the heroine is inadvertently locked in the company safe. Aware that her boss has left for the weekend, she desperately tries to attract attention to herself, justifiably worried that she will suffocate before help arrives. The boss' son Owen Moore arrives on the scene and figures out the girl's predicament, but unfortunately he doesn't know the safe's combination. The tension reaches a fever pitch as the son races out of the office to catch up with his father, who is speeding homeward by train. Director Griffith shows up in a Hitchcock-style cameo role in this beautifully crafted Biograph melodrama, which was partially filmed on location at the Fort Lee, New Jersey railway depot.