Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

weezeralfalfa The Black Legion was a real Depression Era terrorist organization: an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan, with similar purposes and tactics. Their targets included immigrants, Catholics, Jews, African Americans, and labor organizers. It was most concentrated in lower Michigan, especially the Detroit area, and Ohio. Their methods included prejudicial hiring and firing, boycotting businesses, property destruction, intimidation, physical mistreatment, as well as occasional murder. Several examples are provided in this film.First, the promotion of a foreign-born worker(Joe)to shop foreman over the general consensus that Frank(Humphrey Bogart) deserved the promotion resulted in a night raid on Joe's house, burning his house and his father's chicken coup, and breaking things up. After that night, the two weren't seen in that area again... In another example, they smashed the glass window for a store display. In a 3rd example, Bogie loses his new job as foreman, due to his distraction trying to recruit new members from among his fellow workers, as dictated by the Legion brass. His replacement, Mike Grogan, another foreign-born neighbor, is kidnapped at night, tied to a limb by his hands, and whipped on his bare back. He's left there until someone finds him half dead.Bogie's wife now tells him she suspects he's involved in these several incidents. He slaps her, and she leaves with their son for her mother's. Bogie gets drunk and accidentally implicates himself and the organization to his friend Ed(Dick Forman), who tells this to a coworker, who is a Legion member. The Legion plans to kidnap Ed, and whip him, as they did Grogan, hopefully scaring him so he wouldn't notify the authorities. Bogie now wants out of the Legion, but they remind him that he swore an oath never to quit, and there will be dire consequences for him and his family if he does. So, he goes along with the abduction of Ed, which doesn't go as planned. Before they can tie him to a limb, he unwisely makes a dash for it, and Bogie fires several shots at him, hitting him fatally. Bogie is distraught at what he has done. He stays behind the others, tears off his Legion garments and makes his way through the woods to an all night coffee shop, looking disheveled and suspicious. He asks for water, then 2 police enter for a coffee. When the shooting is mentioned on the radio, Bogie gets hysterical. The police arrest him for questioning, and soon he's in jail. I leave the remainder of the story for you to see. This includes the climactic courtroom scene, in which Samuel Hinds delivers a stunning speech about how true American patriots think and act. Hinds was a frequently-used character actor of usually elderly authority figures in films of the 1930s & '40s.Erin O'Brien-Moore played Bogie's wife. After she moved out of his house, she was seldom seen until the trial. Dick Foran played Ed, Bogie's friend who was shot dead. He had a relationship with Betty Grogan(Ann Sheridan), who was the daughter of Mike, who was whipped. The Grogans were friends of Bogie and his wife.The kidnapping and murder of Ed was based upon an actual incident, in which one Legion member testified against the whole 12 members involved. The film doesn't bring out the sometimes widespread involvement if Legion members in local government. It was probably prudent to ignore this subject. The film was banned or heavily censored in various European countries and Australia.I don't know why the Legion chose black as the color for their robe and hood. Perhaps simply because that made them more difficult to see at night. They had a skull and crossbones emblem on their hoods. Perhaps this was in mimicry of the black flags of pirates and anarchists. Or perhaps it was in mimicry of the Italian and British Blackshirts: the paramilitary branch of the Fascist Parties.

Richard_vmt Assuming you are a Bogart fan you will enjoy this unexpected glimpse into his character's deep past. Toothy and gushing, not far from the Bowery Boys (they wear jagged beanies like Jughead), yet he is already a successful family man with the astounding O'Brien-Moore.It is a worker's paradise, yet he gets sucked in to a violent secret society designed to further the good of WASPS like himself. So now at last you see Bogart playing the Fascist! Or the film's interpretation of what Fascism really is. Of course it is not altogether ridiculous but it is really no more than a Boston Blackie action film, typical of the time.It is good though, very entertaining film. You will see images of Bogart which are entirely uncharacteristic.

drystyx Okay, so Bogie is great at everything, but what is he absolutely the best at? Here, we have a story about a group called THE BLACK LEGION, but clearly implied is that it is the KU KLUX KLAN.It is a well written account about how a very ordinary man is swept up into the group. We see hordes of men clinging to the safety of the group. When in the lynch mob, they become different.We see the man's life torn apart, but also the lives of those around him who just want to make their lives, and the lives of others a better place.We are given lots of views of what is taking place in this drama. The drama is full of action, too. It isn't the Macbeth like horror, but the more realistic, every day horror that is depicted, and how it gets out of hand.And that brings us to what Bogie does best. Like the Sierra Madre and other Bogie classics, he is the absolute best at giving us the villain with insecurities, the "realistic" villain, who we see fighting within himself. Much of this is clever writing, also. But it's hard not to think much of it is the genius of Bogart.Obivously a top film, and still as entertaining and interesting today as it was then.

smatysia There is a lot to be said about this movie, and many of the previous commentators have done so very well. A couple of things made me wonder a bit. Did the maniacal orator at the first meeting Frank attended represent that the filmmakers were starting to see some problems with European-style Fascism and National Socialism, and tying it in with a known American problem, the Klan? And then the scene with the Legion leaders, caring only for money, and not a whit of concern for ideology. Is that a warning to Depression-era middle classes not to trust seemingly populist organizations like lodges and unions? Just wondering. Anyway Bogart and the rest of the cast were quite good, but I found the movie preachy and condescending.