G-Man Jeff Crane poses as a crook to infiltrate the notorious Purple Gang, a band of hoodlums which preys upon other hoodlums. Orchestrating the jailbreak of the gang's leader, Crane joins him in a Dillinger-like flight across the country.
Unsuccessful writer Aylmer Franklyn takes the chance to change identities after he discovers a corpse. However, he soon finds himself accused of the murder of a maid at a near-by boarding house.
On trial for murdering his girlfriend, philandering stockbroker Larry Ballentine takes the stand to claim his innocence and describe the actual, but improbable sounding, sequence of events that led to her death.
Raoul Leduc is a police inspector trailing a spy who plots to kidnap an important American atomic scientist. Joe Victor a gangster who is hired to carry out the abduction, balks when he learns what is at stake and helps Leduc out instead.
The big national crime syndicate has moved into town, partnering up with local crime boss Nick Scanlon. McQuigg, the only honest police captain on the force, and his loyal patrolman, Johnson, take on the violent Nick.
Warren Quimby manages a drugstore while trying to keep his volatile wife, Claire, happy. However, when Claire leaves him for a liquor store salesman, Warren can no longer bear it. He decides to assume a new identity in order to murder his wife's lover without leaving a trace. Along the way, his plans are complicated by an attractive neighbor, as well as a shocking discovery that opens up a new world of doubts and accusations.
Jenny Marsh, recently released from prison for killing a man, finds herself under the watchful eye of her parole officer, Griff Marat, who helps her secure a job caring for his ailing mother.
In New York City, an insolent pickpocket, Skip McCoy, inadvertently sets off a chain of events when he targets ex-prostitute Candy and steals her wallet. Unaware that she has been making deliveries of highly classified information to the communists, Candy, who has been trailed by FBI agents for months in hopes of nabbing the spy ringleader, is sent by her ex-boyfriend, Joey, to find Skip and retrieve the valuable microfilm he now holds.
A lovely dame with dangerous lies employs the services of a private detective, who is quickly caught up in the mystery and intrigue of a statuette known as the Maltese Falcon.
After a shoot-out kills five FBI agents in Kansas City the Bureau target John Dillinger as one of the men to hunt down. Waiting for him to break Federal law they sort out several other mobsters, while Dillinger's bank robbing exploits make him something of a folk hero. Escaping from jail he finds Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson have joined the gang and pretty soon he is Public Enemy Number One. Now the G-men really are after him.
A man is murdered, apparently by one of a group of soldiers just out of the army. But which one? And why?
Communists blackmail a shipping executive into spying for them.
Prohibition is ending so bootlegger Bugs Ahearn decides to crack California society. He leases a house from down-on-her-luck Ruth and hires her as social secretary. He rescues Polly Cass from a horsefall and goes home to meet her dad who sells him some phony stock certificates. When he learns about this he sends to Chicago for mob help.
A savings-and-loan bank is robbed; later, a police wiretap identifies meek bank teller Leon Poole as the inside man. In capturing him, detective Sam Wagner accidentally kills Poole's young wife, and at his trial Poole swears vengeance against Wagner. Poole begins his plans to get revenge when he escapes his captors.
After discovering the dead body of her teenage daughter's lover, a housewife takes desperate measures to protect her family from scandal.
A prisoner leads his counterparts in a protest for better living conditions which turns violent and ugly.
Suburban Cowboy follows a drug dealer on Long Island who finds himself over his head when one of his soldiers robs a connection to ruthless Serbian gangsters. When the debt falls on his shoulders he is forced to take drastic measures.
The inventor of a new top-of-the-line burglar alarm system is kidnapped by a gang in order to get him to help them commit robberies.
A Los Angeles detective is sent to New York where he must solve a case involving an old Sicilian Mafia family feud.
A pair of married ex-convicts trying to go straight get jobs at a department store. A gangster who knows about their past threatens to expose it unless they agree to help him rob the department store.