Bill Burrud needs an iron lung to survive. One's coming in on a ship, but it will be tied up in customs for days. So his brother, gangster Robert Armstrong, has his men steal it. The competition hears about this, so they steal it and hold it for ransom. Newspaperman Robert Livingston hears about this, and starts working on the story, and the allied question of how Armstrong's gang makes its money.
It's a nicely complicated story, but director Sidney Salkow can't seem to build up any momentum in what's going on. I had the impression that this was originally intended as a serial with its start-and-stop pacing and its musical cues that sound pulled from the serial library. Some of the characters are more complicated than they would have been in a serial, like Armstrong, but some things are never fully sorted out.
It's a nicely complicated story, but director Sidney Salkow can't seem to build up any momentum in what's going on. I had the impression that this was originally intended as a serial with its start-and-stop pacing and its musical cues that sound pulled from the serial library. Some of the characters are more complicated than they would have been in a serial, like Armstrong, but some things are never fully sorted out.
