Ex-con John Ingram (Edward G. Robinson) has reinvented himself as a oil rig firefighter. Pretty dangerous stuff; but even more damaging is that he can't escape his past. We start off with a pretty funny scene; there's an office fire, but Ingram's assistant, Moose (Guinn Williams) studiously ignores it. Anyway, he meets up later with John, (and wife Helen, played by Ruth Hussey) as they have an emergency call: a major fire. On site, the crew rigs explosives to blow the air supply away from the fire, which smothers it.
That does it. A newsreel truck rolls up; some more cutesy stuff plays out. Then the family visits their own derrick site. A vagrant breaks into their house, saying he's looking for John. He's no ordinary bum, he's Bill (Gene Lockhart), an excon too. John begins by telling him "You can stop sizing me up for a shakedown". Johnny's hit-up twice now for a robbery he wasn't involved in--the subsequent frame-up sent him to the pen in the first place. So, to buy Bill off, he gives the guy a job. he tells Helen that that's all there is to it.
Unfortunately, or intentionally, Bill slips up on the job. Moose knows that he's trouble. For one thing, the guy's drinking; but the big deal is that he confides to John that he, not John, actually pulled the infamous caper nine years ago. His excuse for not coming correct was that he never thought Johnny would be convicted. The blackmail, $25k (an immense sum then, of course), would ensure that Bill could clear him; we learn that Johnny is still on the lamb. No payoff, no confession. That's pretty clever. "I pay you $25,000 for doing your time!" Well, hey, Bill will sign a statement for the dough--a square deal, right?
Not exactly. The devil is indeed in the details, as they agree to mail each other what they want: Johnny sends the check, Bill sends the confession. But Johnny didn't know that Bill's letter won't arrive--he mails it without a valid stamp. So, just like that, cops show up at Johnny's, with a warrant. The cops do check out Bill for his confession, but of course, he gets it returned back from the post office. So, Johnny's nailed again for that pesky burglary, and the escape. It's chain gang time.
Kind of tear jerker stuff with the wife, kid, and Moose. I don't get that Moose thinks they have to keep up the blackmail payments; Bill never gave Johnny the confession, isn't the deal off? Anyway, this chain gang stuff is as wretched as it sounds. They recycle the shackles off a dead prisoner to put on Johnny. The guard Rawlings (Arthur Hohl) has it in for John, because the escape was on his watch. The convicts live in cages, work in swamps...basically die slowly. Johnny keeps getting these nice letters from Helen. One day Moose shows up, pretending to be his lawyer.
"It's bad all right" he admits. But why are they still paying Bill? Anyway, Johnny almost drowns a guard, which means even more brutal treatment. The guard goes a bit too far reading up a photo Helen has sent. Her letter says that Bill, who's taken over the Ingram well, is selling out. That does it for Johnny--time for another break-out. The next time Moose visits, Johnny enlists him in the escape plot. With the tool that Johnny and his buddy get their hands on, they get free of their chains. The actual escape works as pretty good drama. Johnny makes it, but barely.
It gets intense when he has to give some wary officers a ride in his getaway car. They ID him after a bit, but not until he stops and stows away in a waiting truck (literally hanging underneath it). That's surprisingly convenient, as he can drop off when it's safe. Under the nose of the cops, he sneaks back home. Helen is up to the task, doing what she can for him. He admits that he's let her down. She thinks they can "start all over"; but he knows that won't work. Unless... remember that confession?
Johnny's skulking around in the alleys near his house; the cops are lurking and prowling up and down. Meanwhile, there's a big well fire: can Moose handle it? Well, he splits the scene, as Bill won't sell him the well. Like the Creature From the Black Lagoon, Johnny emerges from the roadside to confront Bill. Johnny's set the fire to lure the jerk there so he can threaten him. Bill is desperate, blubbering. He'll do anything..."I did the robbery... I'll tell the cops you're innocent!!" He does just that. Great denouement. The last task is merely to put out the fire. The end.
This is a bit too long--inevitably so, because there's really two stories. The oil business, and the chain gang deal. Obviously Johnny's the connection between the two; but dramatically, the two settings are more or less autonomous. Each has its own characters (both have Johnny, naturally) and plot. Also, there's sort of a domestic subplot within the non-prisoner settings. We get a lot more family stuff here than in the average crime drama. Some of it is quite good, as Hussey is excellent as the faithful wife and protective mother. Bobs Watson is a very good child actor; but there's just too many of these home-front scenes.
I still don't understand why Bill can plausibly blackmail Johnny. The ending would work without the blackmail anyway. The movie might've been more thematically cohesive if we see Johnny escape the first time. In that case, we'd already have a look at this other side of Johnny, so that the long interlude--when he's back on the chain gang--doesn't seem like such an abrupt switch. In fact, the firefighting scenes, which are exciting, give this the flavor of an action-adventure story rather than a crime drama.
Despite some mixing of genres and plots, Blackmail is entertaining and effective. 7/10.
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