This independent production could easily be taken for one of those semi-professional cinematic Sunday school sermons intended for church halls were it not for the menacing presence of Sterling Hayden in the lead and the contradictory visual stimuli of Elwood Bredell's crisp, unsparing documentary-style photography of skid row (Weegee, no less, was a technical consultant on the film), yet populated by an extraordinary collection of familiar Hollywood faces ranging from H.B.Warner to former Keystone Kop Hank Mann. (John Berkes, who is a standout as the piano-playing Racky, died shortly after the production wrapped.)
After feeling that both God and his congregation have forsaken him by abandoning his alcoholic wife to a miserable fate, the Reverend Hayden angrily rejects both, tears off his dog collar and spends a remarkable amount of the film's relatively short running time scraping ignominiously along the lower depths of Los Angeles while vehemently badmouthing God at every opportunity. This being Hollywood during the early fifties, surely he's eventually going to regain his faith and it will all end upliftingly? It sure takes him a long time, and comes suspiciously abruptly!
After feeling that both God and his congregation have forsaken him by abandoning his alcoholic wife to a miserable fate, the Reverend Hayden angrily rejects both, tears off his dog collar and spends a remarkable amount of the film's relatively short running time scraping ignominiously along the lower depths of Los Angeles while vehemently badmouthing God at every opportunity. This being Hollywood during the early fifties, surely he's eventually going to regain his faith and it will all end upliftingly? It sure takes him a long time, and comes suspiciously abruptly!