King of the Underworld

Gambler Dr. Niles Nelson is the personal physician of city crime boss Joe Gurney and his vicious gang, who is killed by the police while attending to one of Gurney’s men. For some reason his physician wife, Dr. Carol Nelson, is suspected of being a member of Gurney’s gang. Threatened with the loss of her medical license, Carol in an effort to clear her name sets up her medical practice in the small town in which two of Gurney’s gangsters are in jail. Gurney, who thinks he’s the Napoleon of Crime (Bogey stood only at 5’8”), leads a successful daring daytime jailbreak. During the jailbreak a gun exchange with the locals leads to the wounding of Gurney, who gets Carol to treat him. Meanwhile Carol befriends Bill Stevens an impoverished but erudite author on a book about Napoleon, who innocently hitches a ride with the mob who later make him join them in the jailbreak. When he escapes, Bill’s shot in the shoulder by the locals and treated by Carol. The egomaniacal Gurney has his boys kidnap Bill when the police release him so he can write his biography in the kingpin’s country hideaway. —Ozu’s World of Movie Reviews