director: Unknown
year: Unknown
country: USA
history notes: Unidentified Film No. 166
alternative titles: Bombenherstellung im Kino

This film has been identified thanks to contributions from members of the Lost FIlms community.

Main title missing from fragment. English inscriptions inside a factory: "Look out", "Avoid friction", "Jobs are good for life / But life is short." Women manufacturing artillery shells [frame scan 1]. Two men beat up a third man (a spy?) and throw him out of the workshop. The foreman (?) [frame scan 2] sits in the same cinema as the villain [frame scan 3]. The villain is found out [frame scan 4] and flees from the cinema [frame scan 5]: Chase! He lights a match whilst stood next to a large shell [frame scan 6]. The fuse catches fire [frame scan 7]. Explosion. Almost completely covered by earth, he still waves the American flag [frame scan 8].

Length: 44m
Format: 35mm, 1.33:1
Picture/Sound: coloured, silent
Notes: Yellow tint.

Source notes
Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum für Film und Fernsehen

This film is A MUNITION WORKER'S CURSE, a Universal Nestor comedy released 12/10/1917. The leading actor with the wild eyes and moustache is David Morris, a veteran of Biograph, Kalem, L-Ko, and Mack Sennett comedies. Here's a plot synopsis for the film from the 12/1/1917 issue of the Universal Weekly (pg. 22):

“A Munition Workers Curse (Nestor)
Cast
Mayor Engenbritzen……………Dave Morris
His Wife………………………………Gladys Tennyson

Mayor Engenbritzen had a decided leaning towards women. Anyone could see by looking at his wife that his taste was excellent, but for all that he yearned to be Mayor of Turkey. One morning when he caressed his wife’s hand thinking it belonged to the maid, he was in a lonesome frame of mind as he walked past a row of munition factories. His quick eye was taken by an attractive girl in trousers. She enters one of the factories. So does the mayor. In less than a short time he comes out all black and blue and bleeding. To account for his appearance he tells his wife how he had been injured in saving a baby, but that night at moving picture theatre, at which he and his wife are invited guests, a picture is shown which had the mayor as the principal actor, and for its plot what really happened in the munitions factory. It was scandalous.”

With this review there's an accompanying photo of the characters in the munitions factory with signs on the walls that say "Look Out," "Don't Shake Hands," "Avoid Friction," etc. I'll try to get a good scan of this tomorrow and then post it here.