Academy Award winner Spencer Tracy stars in the first work by the great German director Fritz Lang (Metropolis) after Lang fled Germany rather than produce films for the Nazis. In this hard-edged exposé of mob violence--produced at a time when lynching was common in the United States, but still powerful and relevant today--young Joe Wilson (Tracy) is mistakenly arrested for a kidnapping while traveling through a small town on his way to meet his fiancée. Rumors spread among the townspeople, and passions escalate until a mob sets fire to the jail. Barely escaping with his life, the formerly innocent young man will now stop at nothing in his quest for vengeance ... unless the love of his fiancée can stop him before he too becomes a killer.