The Four Just Men

Four men - Hugh Sinclair, Griffith Jones, Francis L. Sullivan and Frank Lawton - begin a program of sabotage and assassination around London. Newspaperwoman Anna Lee is on their trail. What do these four very English gentlemen hope to accomplish? Are they spies for a foreign government? Or are they patriots, hoping to cleanse Britain of traitors before the inevitable war?

Walter Forde's bizarre and violent movie is derived from a Edgar Wallace story. Although it looks like a shocker, there were lots of movies in the era that supported the idea of vigilante justice. In the US, the Production Code ended most of those- with the occasional exception of a Gower Gulch producer urging people to rise up and shoot down gangsters. You would think that Britain, with its own censorship,would not permit the production of a movie like this, but the writing was on the wall, and people clearly saw World War Two coming. Even so, it was a near thing. Although there were showings of this in London in June, it didn't go into general release until November, and didn't show in the US until April of 1940, with an epilogue showing goose-stepping Nazi troops and,an appeal to US involvement.

There's an air of constant frustration rather than suspense about the movie, with the four men uncertain of their faltering plans, and Anna Lee's baffled investigation contributing. I think it was a deliberate choice by the film makers, but it makes it more difficult to watch the film.