Moonrise

Dane Clark plays Danny Hawkins, a young man tormented both by images of his father being lynched for murder and the bullying of Jerry Sykes. Matters come to a head at the local dance where Hawkins and Sykes vie for the attention of schoolteacher Gilly Johnson. In the ensuing fight, Hawkins kills Sykes in self-defence and hides the body. But when the body is found, Hawkins, wracked with guilt, becomes increasingly unstable until his grandmother (Ethel Barrymore in an outstanding cameo) persuades him to do the decent thing. Frank Borzage's gritty film noir, set in the steamy south, is an intriguing film, with Clark outstanding as a man haunted by the past and the present.