Frank Lovejoy is a veteran who never was sent overseas during the war. He can't find a job to support his wife (Kathleen Ryan) and little boy. Angry, embittered, and perhaps a little guilty, he falls in with bad guy Lloyd Bridges who sport platinum cuff links and seems to be enjoying himself all over the little California town. Bridges offers Lovejoy a job as his wheel man. Just a couple of minor stick-ups, nothing serious. But the robberies escalate into the kidnapping of a college boy from a rich family. Bridges, an envious psychopath, kills the kid out of spite. Both Bridges and Lovejoy are caught and jailed but several thousand people break into the jail, beat the men, and pass them outside overhead like serving platters where they meet vigilante justice.<br /><br />I haven't seen it since I was a kid but the memory of that climactic collective murder still makes me wince.<br /><br />It's impossible to comment on the performances, or on much else for that matter, after the passage of so many years but unless my brain has turned to tofu, I'm compelled to recommend the film.<br /><br />It was made at the height of the anti-Red hysteria in Hollywood, a time when subliminal pro-communist messages were being read into cinematic trifles. And the advertising campaign that accompanied this release seemed almost to goad the audience into mindless mob action. Get in on the ground floor of the explosive rage for justice! That sort of thing. In other words, hang the Reds.<br /><br />It was completely at odds with the message of the movie itself, which was that ordinary guys can get sucked up by circumstances and find themselves suffering the same fate as those who are truly evil. Oh -- and mobs can be dangerous. (If you're a social psychologist, think "risky shift".) Out of all the simple black-and-white crime melodramas that appeared in the post-war period, this is one of the few that had me by the lapels.<br /><br />Based on a real incident in 1930s San Jose, California.<br /><br />If it shows up, be sure to catch it.