Bogart plays a forceful attorney who spends almost the entire film trying to convince the jury and the audience that Derek is an innocent victim of circumstantial evidence
To prove his point, he takes the audience through a series of flashbacks into the dirty squalor and deprivation that brought about the killing in question
The film is a patently phony attempt at social commentary which simply didn't come off
A sequel, "Let No Man Write My Epitaph," was made in 1960
One line of dialog from "Knock On Any Door," used as Derek's motto, was often quoted by young people in the fifties: "Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse."