The best Wilfred Lucas’s crime movies

In the underworld of Manhattan, a woman dares to stand up to one of the city's most powerful gangsters.

Joe and Paul Fabrini are Wildcat, or independent, truck drivers who have their own small one-truck business. The Fabrini boys constantly battle distributors, rivals and loan collectors, while trying to make a success of their transport company.

Members of a teenage gang are sent to the State Reformatory, presided over by the callous Thompson. Soon Patsy Gargan, a former gangster appointed Deputy Commissioner, arrives and takes over the administration to run the place on radical principles. Thompson needs a quick way to discredit him.

When a hard-working machinist loses a promotion to a Polish-born worker, he is seduced into joining the secretive Black Legion, which intimidates foreigners through violence.

A young woman is on trial for murder. In flashback, we learn of her struggles to overcome poverty as a teenager -- a mistaken arrest and prison term for shoplifting and lack of employment lead to involvement with gangsters. In a brothel, she meets a young lawyer, scion of a wealthy and prestigious family, who falls for her and helps her turn around her life. But her past catches up with her, and she must face the music rather than cause him scandal.

When retired racket boss John Sarto tries to reclaim his place and former friends try to kill him, he finds solace in a monastery and reinvents himself as a pious monk.

A corrupt D.A. with governatorial ambitions is annoyed by an investigative reporter's criticism of his criminal activities and decides to frame the reporter for manslaughter in order to silence him.

Barry Brandon, a criminal lawyer, visits the night club of Denny Larkin, his primary client, with Betty Walker, a spoiled society girl. The police raid the club and Brandon pleads that the whole group is guilty, just to get even with Larkin for a rebuke. On the same night in court, Madge Carter is on trial for disorderly conduct, and Brandon volunteers to defend her, and proves the case against her if a frame-up. Finding that she is penniless, Brandon hires her as his secretary, and falls in love with her. Brandon is appointed district attorney and has ambitions of becoming the state governor. Having dinner at Betty's home, she maneuvers him, while he is drunk, into marrying her. Later, Madge is a witness when Larkin shoots down a fellow gangster. By threatening Brandon's life, he forces her to commit perjury at his trial, and say he fired in self-defense. Brandon, the prosecuting attorney (who has had his marriage to Betty annulled) knows she is lying but doesn't know why.

Detective Nick Carter is brought in to foil spies at the Radex Airplane Factory, where a new fighter plane is under manufacture.

Joyce and Fred MacNeil's honeymoon comes to an abrupt and unsatisfying halt when Fred is accused of murder. Railroaded into prison through the efforts of politically ambitious assistant DA Marlin (John Miljan), Fred awaits his doom on Death Row, while Joyce works overtime on the outside to clear her husband's name

A young singer, Marge Dexter, becomes involved in trouble when she works in a nightclub in which two of the band-members are in reality undercover-police officers who believe that the club is the headquarters of a dangerous gang of crooks.

John Thompson is kidnapped by mobsters after quitting his job. Then he is arrested, tried, and sentenced to death for murders they committed. A suspicious detective thinks he is innocent and works to save his life.

Man about town and First Class cricketer A.J. Raffles keeps himself solvent with daring robberies. Meeting Gwen from his schooldays and falling in love all over again, he spends the weekend with her parents, Lord and Lady Melrose. A necklace presents an irresistible temptation, but also in attendance is Scotland Yard's finest, finally on the trail.

Bonnie Brewster (Claire Trevor) and "Packy" Campbell (Brian Donlevy), rival reporters on competing newspapers, team up to put an end to a smuggling gang that brings illegal aliens to the United States, and then makes further victims of them by extortion payments. They go to Vancouver, Canada and board a ship carrying aliens. But the gang recognizes them as reporters and gang-henchmen Tony Scula (Ralf Harolde) and Ira Conklin (Harry Woods, posing as government officials take them off the ship. But Campbell recognizes Scula as the gunman who killed Carmen Zoro (Rita Hayworth).

A young couple and their child fall prey to kidnappers when a storm drives them into a seemingly abandoned farmhouse.

A brash night club singer becomes a cop to impress a woman.

A convict hiding in Chinatown assumes the identity of a cripple to track down a businessman who framed him 15 years previously. He discovers that his daughter has fallen in love with the businessman's son.

A detective must solve a case where a girl was murdered in a room--and all the doors and windows were locked from the inside.