Crimen ajeno

George Storm (Jack Holt) is a reputable construction engineer but his life changes the moment a bandit trio holds up the company payroll car. And that is because the daring holdup is successful because the gang leader, Tom Farrow (Jack Holt), looks exactly like Jack Holt because he is also played by Jack Holt, and if he hadn't looked exactly like Jack Holt, the story would then have been about a holdup in which the gang leader didn't look like Jack Holt, and Jack Holt and producer Larry Darmour had just made six-of-those in a row. Nobody likes to stay in a rut.

Well, of course, the construction company is none too thrilled about losing the payroll and is even less thrilled when eye-witnesses come forward and tell them the gang leader was the company's most-trusted construction engineer George Storm. The latter has no alibi as Tom Farrow has sent his wife, Patricia Farrow (Patricia Ellis), over to dally with and distract Mr. Storm during the holdup, and he isn't the first man to be distracted and dallied by Patricia Ellis in a film and find out later that he can provide no alibi, since Patricia Ellis characters usually did their distracting and dallying in some remote spot where eye-witnesses weren't present.

So dead-ringer Storm goes to prison (following one of Edward LeSaint's usual stern-Judge lectures), and the prison is another one of those southern chain-gang types where lifers like Ernie Adams and Ben Welden are kept. The rest of the convicts are mostly members of the Hall Johnson Choir and they are there to provide authentic atmosphere to the southern prison and to sing a few spirituals, plus one original song written by Hall Johnson.

Storm listens to a little I-got-the-lowdown-miseries music and then engineers---heh-heh-heh---an escape and takes a hell-bent course in the direction of vindication and revenge and its all katie-bar-the-door from that point; aside from some more distracting stuff from Patricia Ellis. Lordy, that lady could dally.

Jack Holt's stand-in got more on-screen time here than ever before. The Holt characters wore different clothes in this film and that helped a lot in allowing the audience keep up with which one had his back to the camera and which one didn't.