"THEY MADE THEIR OWN RULES... and played for keeps!"
Rick Mason is the no-good lowdown rat who tries to capitalize on postwar patriotism and grief. He finagles a war widow into giving up her savings for a nonexistent memorial. When Mason falls in love with the widow he has pangs of conscience, but he reckons without his con-artist boss, who tends to bolster his arguments with muscle and bullets.
John Payne
Rick Mason
Joan Caulfield
Deborah Owens Clark
Dan Duryea
Silky Randall
Shelley Winters
Tory
Dorothy Hart
Madeline
Richard Rober
Max
Dan O'Herlihy
Duke
Nicholas Joy
Walter Vanderline
Percy Helton
Charlie Jordan
Rick Mason is the no-good lowdown rat who tries to capitalize on postwar patriotism and grief. He finagles a war widow into giving up her savings for a nonexistent memorial. When Mason falls in love with the widow he has pangs of conscience, but he reckons without his con-artist boss, who tends to bolster his arguments with muscle and bullets.
Poor old war widow "Deb" (Joan Caulfield) is hoodwinked into donating her savings to build a memorial to her late husband by the sharp "Rick" (John Payne). It turns out that there is no such edifice, but "Rick" isn't able to be quite as cold and calculating as usual. He starts to fall for this dignified and respectable woman. That's a risky scenario, for his boss "Silky" (Dan Duryea) just wants the cash, and that's that. It doesn't help either that his bosses gal "Tory" (Shelley Winters) is pretty flaky, also quite keen on "Rick" and is quite shrewd at manipulation, too! Payne was never exactly versatile nor, for that matter, was the usually wooden Duryea but they do well enough with this solid story and whilst there is an inevitability to the ending, George Sherman manages to keep this well paced for 90 minutes and Winters plays her part really quite effectively. The lighting could have done with some extra wattage at times, but it is still good watch.
Petty crook and cop-killer Martin Rome, in bad shape from wounds in the hospital prison ward, still refuses to help slimy lawyer Niles clear his client by confessing to another crime. Police Lt. Candella must check Niles' allegation; a friend of the Rome family, he walks a tightrope between sentiment and cynicism. When Martin fears Candella will implicate his girlfriend Teena, he'll do anything to protect her. How many others will he drag down to disaster with him?
Truck driver Mike Lambert is a down-and-out mining engineer searching for a job. When his rig breaks down in a small town, he happens upon a venomous seductress. When her boyfriend robs a bank, they intend to frame Lambert.
A brash young lawyer takes a short-term, high-paying job as bodyguard for a slick business exec being threatened by a former partner, and quickly realizes he may be in over his head.
A corrupt D.A. with governatorial ambitions is annoyed by an investigative reporter's criticism of his criminal activities and decides to frame the reporter for manslaughter in order to silence him.
A crooked politician finds himself being accused of murder by a gangster from whom he refused help during a re-election campaign.
Ex-con turned private investigator Bradford Galt suspects someone is following him and maybe even trying to kill him. With the assistance of his spunky secretary, Kathleen Stewart, he dives deep into a mystery in search of answers.
Police Lt. Leonard Diamond vies to bring a clever, well connected, and sadistic gangster to justice all the while obsessing over the gangster's girlfriend.
Upon waking up to the news that the man she’d gone on a date with the previous night has been murdered, a young woman with only a faint memory of the night’s events begins to suspect that she murdered him while attempting to resist his advances.
When an employee at an illegal gambling den dies suspiciously, her sister, Nancy, looks into the situation and falls for Johnny O'Clock, a suave partner in the underground casino. Selfish and non-committal by nature, Johnny slowly begins to return Nancy's affection and decides to run away with her, but conflict within his business threatens their plans. As Johnny tries to distance himself from the casino, his shady past comes back to haunt him.
A spectacular heist starts to unravel as the crooks take it on the lam.