An insurance man wishing for a more exciting life becomes wrapped up in the affairs of an imprisoned embezzler, his model girlfriend, and a violent private investigator.

After a roustabout sailor avoids being shanghaied in 1850s San Francisco, his audacity helps him rise to a position of power in the vice industry of the infamous Barbary Coast.

Childhood chums Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connelly grow up on opposite sides of the fence: Rocky matures into a prominent gangster, while Jerry becomes a priest, tending to the needs of his old tenement neighborhood.

A crime-busting lawyer and his initially reluctant attorney father take on the forces that run gambling and prostitution in their small Southern town.

An overweight lab technician with low self esteem, brought on by his dominant mother, becomes a serial killer of female nurses.

A salesman tries to sell a tractor to a customer who hates tractors while falling for the girl.

After World War I, Armistice Lloyd Hart goes back to practice law, former saloon keeper George Hally turns to bootlegging, and out-of-work Eddie Bartlett becomes a cab driver. Eddie builds a fleet of cabs through delivery of bootleg liquor and hires Lloyd as his lawyer. George becomes Eddie's partner and the rackets flourish until love and rivalry interfere.

A gambling boss is pressured by the law and press when a crusade is started against him after one of his collectors becomes a killer.

Dishonorably discharged from the Army Air Corps, Brad Dunham (George Raft) disconsolately decides to try his luck with Shanghai's postwar black market. Teaming with the treacherous Tamara Baranoff (June Havoc), Dunham prospers in his newly-found illicit profession, much to the dismay of his best friend, reporter Mark Andrews (Tom Tully). When Tamara has the troublesome Andrews murdered, Dunham realizes the folly of his behavior and works overtime to squash the black market for good and all.

The "war of nerves" which gripped the European continent in 1938, is the background for this war thriller starring George Sanders.