The Outer Gate

Ben Alexander is a rising star in Ralph Morgan's office; Morgan's daughter, Kay Linaker, seems t take a personal interest of him. However, Alexander is soon framed for embezzling $5,000, and it takes several years before the actual culprit is discovered. OMogan is contrite, and tries to make it up to Alexander, by inviting him to live in his house, but Alexander, with his new buddies from prison, is nursing a hope for revenge.

It's a mildly underwhelming effort from writer-director Ray Cannon, in which situations arise because of pretty simplistic characters, and a lurching pace. There are also a couple of scenes to pad the movie up to over an hour: one scene in which Miss Linaker and Alexander are walking around a huge garden, and another scene in a night club. There's clearly a message in this film, that peple should be more compassionate, but it is accomplished in such a mechanical fashion that there is little pleasure in this Poverty Row second feature.

Insipid story about a young construction engineer (Alexander) falsely accused of embezzlement by his boss. The court sentences him to 15 years, but through a deus ex machina he only serves five. All this time Borden, the employer, has suffered a guilty conscience and wants to make amends, but Bob sees this only as an opportunity to satisfy his thirst for revenge. With the help of his cell-mate Acuff (released at the same time on parole) and a crooked nightclub owner, Bob's scheme works like clockwork. But will he go through with allowing the old man wrongly to get sent up for the same crime the old man accused him of?

I was left wondering, if Bob and Lois grew up friends together and Borden had known Bob forever, why Borden was so quick in accusing Bob of the crime in the first place. Though this is a forgettable picture, it does leave one with questions of how you would act if you were sent to prison for a crime you didn't commit. The message of this story is clear: just forgive everybody and move on.

This one many years later is a kind of period piece not so elegantly hung on a morality play. While the story is not particularly well written it plays better than it should due to a very solid cast. It's a low budget second feature that is fairly wooden in production. The message is revenge is a dead-end emotion for men who seek it leaving more destruction and sorrow. Forgiveness is the only path forward. Good message but hung on a clunker story here. If not for the cast, especially Kay Linaker, it is entirely forgettable.

A typically thin Monogram production. Good guy Ben Alexander becomes a bad guy when boss Ralph Morgan puts him in prison for years for an embezzlement crime he didn't commit. Released upon the suicide confession of the guilty party, Alexander turns to a life of vengeance. His former boss feels guilty about having had a fine employee put away for so long and lets him live in his spacious house and spend quality time with his (not so) lovely daughter Kay Linaker. The bad guy helps his criminal friends steal a quarter of a million dollars from the house safe and then almost has Morgan put away for the same crime with which he had been wrongly pinned. An eleventh hour prodigal son conclusion leaves the viewer a little confused about the proceedings (but probably ready to start another, more satisfying movie). Overlong at 64 minutes.