The Devil's Party (1938)

Elements of Manhattan Melodrama and Angels With Dirty Faces are to be found in The Devil's Party. Though the two cited are better films The Devil's Party can certainly hold its own.

Back in the day four boys and the tomboy girl that tagged along with them who grew up to be Victor McLaglen, Paul Kelly, John Gallaudet, William Gargan and Beatrice Roberts commit a robbery in which a fire is started. The boy grows up to be McLaglen takes the rap for the rest and goes to reform school.

Fast forward several years and the grownups are now the owner of a swank gambling club and the girl singer attraction in same which would be McLaglen and Roberts. Paul Kelly has become a priest who runs a settlement house and Gargan and Gallaudet who are brothers are cops with ambitions to become detectives.

It's that ambition and the fact that McLaglen sends a pair of enforcers played by Joe Downing and Frank Jenks to collect a gambling debt and they kill the debtor sets in motion a whole string of events that pits the former pals from Hell's Kitchen against each other and it results in tragedy.

Some nice performances all around by the principal players make this B programmer from Universal something special. The Devil's Party is a real cinema diamond in the rough waiting to be discovered.