coltras35

A married undertaker having an affair, Jack Hartrampf, is a reluctant eyewitness to the shooting of a Los Angeles cop. He does not wish to testify, but captain of detectives "Barney" Barnaby (Edward G. Robinson) is just as determined.

After a bank robbery pulled by Alan Barkis and his gang, another policeman is gunned down and a bank teller is taken hostage. Escort agency madam Mona Ross (Paulette Goddard) is willing to help Barnaby with the case for a fee.

Barnaby places one of Barkis' partners, Marty Kusalich, under arrest until Marty implicates the real killer. Pete Monte steals a boat in an attempt to get Barkis to freedom ...

Can Barnaby and his lieutenant, Lacey, arrive in the nick of time?

Edward G. Robinson plays a good guy - a detective captain - in this lively crime drama that is centred around the police tackling a cop killer, witness of the murder, a bank robbery plot, bunco marriages and some odd cases. It's filmed like a documentary, but there's some amusing moments balancing out the grittier ones. Robinson plays his character cool, calm and efficient; he runs a tight ship. There's are interesting characters, and some tense moments such as the bank robbery and the finale with the kidnapped girl escaping from the hoodlums in a warehouse.

Victor Scott (Edward G. Robinson), a highly accomplished prosecuting attorney becomes disillusioned when he learns that the man he was responsible for sending to the electric chair (DeForest Kelly) has finally been exonerated and found to be innocent after all.

With his reputation now in tatters he hits the bottle ending up on skid row. But he slowly picks himself up from the gutter becomes a defence lawyer and a "fixer" for racketeer Frank Garland (Albert Dekker.)

Edward G. Robinson delivers a cracker of a performance yet again as an ambitious D. A with a perfect track record of winning cases, but unknowingly sends an innocent man to the electric chair, and turns to demon alcohol as his career goes down the doldrums, and then gets embroiled into dirty mob politics. The plot is taut, the dialogue and the performances are sharp -it's a gripping legal noir thriller without misstepping into dullness.

A violent con, Vincent Canelli, escapes prison on the night of his execution. With the help of a phony newspaper reporter and Canelli's girlfriend, Hatti, who has planned the escape, the con takes along five hostages: the prison priest, the prison doctor, one of the guards, the young reporter whose place has been taken by one of the gang, and the kidnapped daughter of a guard who was forced to facilitate the escape.

Another inmate, Peter Manning, is taken along because Canelli wants the large amount of stolen money Manning hid before going to jail. He killed someone during the robbery, and refuses to reveal to the authorities where the money is unless his death sentence is changed to a life sentence.

The gang ends up at a hideout, but as they are preparing to flee the country with the loot, they're surrounded by police. Canelli threatens to kill hostages if he's not given safe passage; he shoots and seriously injures one of the hostages, and murders the kidnapped prison guard to make his point.

Prison break/gangster films aren't usually on the top of my watchlist, but Black Tuesday caught my eye, and it's one mean thriller with an unpredictable body count, plenty of gun play, and a fairly tense storyline, especially towards the end. Of course, the one adding the fuel to this little thriller is Edward G. Robinson, who, as mobster Vincent Canelli, has a giant chip on his shoulder and is devoid of any empathy- he's a cold fish, sadistic and incarceration on death row sees him reject morality absolutely and allows him to kill indiscriminately in the name of survival first, and greed second. The others perform excellently, such as Peter Graves, who shows a little remorse. Jean Parker plays Canelli's moll, the one who made the prison break possible.