Sworn Enemy

A dark movie that, had it been made a few years later, would have been a film noir. It begins with Robert Young's looking for a job. He can't get one because gangsters insist that he pay protection money that exceeds his potential salary.

He hooks up with the appealing Florence Rice and her boss, who runs the company where he'd been looking for a job. Her father is released from prison and all become involved in a crime-busting plan.

Nat Pendleton as a loyal boxer is at his very best here. He is portrayed as likable, strong, and attractive. The goofiness he was asked to assume in almost every other movie I've seen him in is absent here.

There is a gay undertone to the story as it involves the crime boss. He is a disabled man with an obsession for fighters. We see a frieze of Greco-Roman athletes in his apartment. And when Rice tries to turn his head a little, he tells her sourly that he has no real interest in legs. Maybe this is because of his own disability. Maybe it means women's legs.

The movie packs a wallop and is undeservedly obscure.