When a wrongly-accused prisoner barely survives a lynch-mob attack and is presumed dead, he vindictively decides to fake his death and frame the mob for his supposed murder. Joe Wilson and Katherine Grant are in love, but he doesn't have enough money for them to get married, so Katherine moves across the country to make money. But things go disastrously wrong for Joe when he stops in a small town and is mistaken for a wanted kidnapper. Through the course of the movie, Fritz Lang shows us how a decent and once-civilized man can become a ruthless and bitter man. Based on the story "Mob Rule" by Norman Krasna. —Andre'a M. Thompson <athompso@ziggy.st.hmc.edu> Hard worker Joseph "Joe" Wilson and teacher Katherine Grant are in love but do not have enough money to get married. Katherine gets a better job in Washington and together with Joe, they save money to get married one year later. Joe quits his job in the factory and uses his savings to buy a gas station, working with his brothers Charlie and Tom. He makes enough money to get married with Katherine and buys a car. While driving with his dog Rainbow to meet his fiancée, Joe is stopped in Strand by the redneck deputy "Bugs" Meyers as a suspect in the kidnapping of a girl in the Peabody case. When they find peanuts in his pocket and a $5 bill in his pocket with the numeration of the money paid for ransom, Joe is arrested in jail for investigation. "Bugs" Meyers makes a comment in the barbershop about the prisoner and sooner the gossip is spread in the little town. As a tale never loses in the telling, Joe is accused by the population of kidnapping and they try to invade the police station to lynch him. For political reasons, Governor Burt does not send the National Guard to help Sheriff Tad Hummel to protect Joe and the police station is burnt down by the vigilantes. Katherine witnesses the action and has a breakdown. Joe is presumed dead but out of the blue he appears at his brothers' apartment seeking justice. He had learned that in accordance with the laws, Lynch Law is murder in the first degree and his brothers open a case against 22 inhabitants of Strand. The prosecutor Mr. Adams accepts the case and Katherine Grant is the prime witness. Joe's revenge is set in motion. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil It's been one year since Chicago pump jockey Joe Wilson and schoolteacher Katherine Grant have seen each other, when Katherine moved to Capitol City for a better paying job so that they jointly could earn enough money quicker to be able to get married. Joe is now driving to Capitol City in he feeling they have enough money for that permanent reunion. En route in the small town of Strand, Joe is stopped by the local sheriff in they having circumstantial evidence that he may be involved in a kidnapping. Word spreads quickly throughout the town that "a perpetrator" in the kidnapping has been apprehended and is being held in the local jail. Wanting their form of justice faster than what the sheriff's department is able to do, many of the townsfolk decide to take matters into their own hands and storm the jail, ultimately burning it down, the fire started just as Katherine, hearing about Joe's incarceration, arrives on the scene to see Joe in the cell window of the burning building, she witnessing Joe's death which places her in a semi-comatose state in emotional shock. Two subsequent items emerge which change the nature of the matter. First, the true kidnappers are apprehended in another town, they who confess to the crime. As such under the law, those in Strand that stormed the jail and burned down the building could be charged with Joe's murder. And second, Joe, aware of the law, reveals himself to be alive only to his two brothers, Charlie and Tom Wilson, back in Chicago, Joe who was able to escape from the burning building. With Charlie and Tom's help, Joe wants his own form of vigilante justice to see that those who "killed" him are charged and convicted with his murder which he doesn't believe will happen in the townsfolk protecting their own regardless of what they know to be the truth. In the process of the subsequent trial, Katherine has evidence that Joe is actually alive. She herself has to decide what to do, especially in believing that Joe's own vigilantism is not the man she knows and is not a foundation for a life together with him if that's what he still has in mind. —Huggo Passing through a small town, Joe is arrested for kidnapping. A lynch mob burns down the jail and Joe is believed killed. The incident has been captured on newsreel film and, for revenge, Joe urges his brothers to use the film to prove the mob guilty of his murder. —Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
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