I'm a big Bogart fan, and so I'm shocked that I'd never seen The Black Legion before. Humphrey Bogart plays a decent, hardworking American man who is passed up for a promotion at work. He bitterly blames the son of an immigrant who wins the job, and starts listening to the talk radio of his day, which was primarily about how the foreigners are stealing the jobs of hard-working Americans. (Things have changed so much since then.) Soon enough, Bogart has joined the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan analogue The Black Legion.

Here's the trailer:

It was released on DVD for, I believe, the first time last March. Don't get me wrong; The Black Legion isn't a great movie. It's clearly a melodrama, although it definitely earns points for tackling a subject that, even then, was problematic. And it doesn't have one of those awful old movie tacked-on happy endings, either. There's also the weird fact that the Legion only targets white minorities—Irishmen, Frenchmen—for their hate. I know the Klan was also opposed to immigrants from white countries, but it seems odd, and is probably due to the race issues of Hollywood at the time, that the Legion doesn't target even one black family. but it's worth it to see a young Bogart acting his heart out—he really gets into his character (although he never did manage to learn how to cry effectively onscreen. I wish a Howard Hawks-level director had managed to get a hold of this thing; we'd still be talking about it in film schools today.