Bad Guy (1937)

Bruce Cabot winds up in prison, gets paroled, plays rough as a line man in this MGM programmer.

The direction by Edward Cahn is mostly adequate visually, but weak in terms of line reading -- Virginia Grey, as the girl Cabot and his brother, Edward Norris both want is poor, seemingly more interested in her enunciation than her feelings. It also appears that the human side of the story was so short that they had to cut in half a reel or more of Norris attending a lecture on high voltage, so the audience can be fascinated by images of electricity ladders. Because I saw such things in grade school, I wasn't.

There's a potentially interesting character study of a guy who actually doesn't feel any fear, but the powers-that-be were either incapable of or unwilling to offer such a story. Instead it turns into a straight melodrama, diverting for an hour, but not much more.