"Free as the birds and smooth as a snake, Bat Roberts is on parole."
A conscientious attorney who is a member of the State Parole Board, finds his own son, using an alias, up for parole and makes the decision to cast the approving vote.
Lewis Stone
John Webster
James Gleason
Detective Daniels
Bruce Cabot
Robert Webster - Alias Bat Williams
Louise Latimer
Letty Graves
Betty Grable
Mildred Webster
Grace Bradley
Grace Forbes
Nella Walker
Helen Webster
Frank M. Thomas
Attorney Pierce
Harry Jans
Vic - Henchman
A conscientious attorney who is a member of the State Parole Board, finds his own son, using an alias, up for parole and makes the decision to cast the approving vote.
We start out looking favorably at convict Bat Williams, but it is not long that we realize that we have been scammed. For the rest of the film we continue to update our opinion of Bat and the parole system.
Brazen perpetual offender Barbara Graham tries to go straight but she finds herself implicated in a murder and sent to death row.
After being framed for a policeman's murder, a criminal escapes prison and sets out for revenge.
A crooked politician finds himself being accused of murder by a gangster from whom he refused help during a re-election campaign.
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.
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.
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?
Based partially on the story of Bonnie and Clyde, Eddie Taylor is an ex-convict who cannot get a break after being released from prison. When he is framed for murder, Taylor is forced to flee with his wife Joan Graham and baby. While escaping prison after being sentenced to death, Taylor becomes a real murderer, condemning himself and Joan to a life of crime and death on the road.
An attorney defends a hoodlum of murder, using the oppressiveness of the slums to appeal to the court.
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 kindly, enthusiastic, newly-arrived American immigrant from Hungary is forced to turn to a life of crime after his face is badly disfigured in a hotel fire.