Zeus

Crime Ring (1938)

• Director
  • Leslie Goodwins
• Writers
  • J. Robert Bren(screen play)
  • Gladys Atwater(screen play)
  • Reginald Taviner(story)
• Stars
  • Allan Lane
  • Frances Mercer
  • Clara Blandick

  RKO Radio's ace short-subjects director Leslie Goodwins graduated to features with the economically produced Crime Ring. Allan Lane plays a hotshot newspaperman who takes on a phony spiritualist ring. The crooked soothsayers are in league with a band of stock swindlers, coercing the gullible into parting company with their life savings on the advice of the "dear departed." Teaming with unemployed actress Frances Mercer, Lane poses as a potential sucker to draw out the bad guys. Lane and Mercer prove to be too clever for their own good, however, and it's problematic as to whether or not they'll survive until the closing credits. Crime Ring was partially remade in 1950 as Bunco Squad.