Band leader Frank Martin is convicted and sentenced to death for murdering the owner of a club in which he had performed. Frank's innocent of the crime, and singer Ruth Chapman can provide him with an alibi. But Ruth is missing, and records show she died years before. As Frank awaits execution, he enlists the help of his heiress girlfriend and his lawyer to clear his name.
Centring on the activities of a gang of assorted criminals and, in particular, their leader – a vicious young hoodlum known as "Pinkie" – the film's main thematic concern is the criminal underbelly evident in inter-war Brighton.
Bill Saunders, a former prisoner of war living in England, whose experiences have left him unstable and violent, gets into a bar fight in which he kills a man and then flees.
When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life.
The old and sick detective superintendent Bärlach has to investigate the murder of his colleague Ulrich Schmied, who was murdered in the middle of the country road.
George Nader plays a reporter whose career is ruined by liquor. A comeback opportunity presents itself when Nader is a bystander at the arrest of a well-known criminal.
