Nation Aflame (1937)

• 64%
• 1937
• Drama
• Victor Halperin
• Noel Madison
• Norma Trelvar
• Lila Lee

Frank Sandino (Noel Madison), a suave, smooth confidence man, and his henchies are about to be run out of town on a fake real estate scheme, but his oratory skills soon has the town rubes in a buying frenzy. Sandino and Roland Adams (Harry Holman), portly and trusty-looking front man for Sandino, form an Avenging Angels league to rid America of foreigners, and plan to make a fortune selling robes to the members. Sandino decides to adopt the name of Sands for this escapade. They return to a town in which Adams was once the mayor, and find that Adams' daughter, Wynne (Norma Trelvar), is busy entertaining a host of friends at a party she is giving for her fiancee District Attorney Bob Sherman (Arthur Singley.) Once installed in the town, with the aid of the trusted Adams, Sands soon has gathered a flock of potential members for the Avenging Angels. He initiates them by forcing them to kneel while he holds a revolver at their head and forces them to take the oath that carries death as the punishment for breaking it. He and Adams then sell them hoods, cloaks and revolvers at fabulously high prices. It is soon easy for Sands/Sandino to turn the hatred among the members against the city's foreign elements. The town citizens, foreign-born excepted, are easily swayed by Sands, with the exception of Sherman and newspaper editor Harry Warren (Allan Cavan.) With the money rolling in, Sands opens chapters in other parts of the state, and when Adams voices his resentment at Sands' courting of his daughter, who has split from Sherman, Sands caters to the old man's ambitions and has him elected governor of the state. Sherman, after the Avenging Angels strike at the aviation plant because of the many foreigners it employs, Sherman urges Warren to start a campaign to expose Sands. Sands sends some of his henchmen, led by Dave Burtis (Roger Williams), after the crusading newsman and he is whipped to death. Sherman redoubles his efforts and even Adams is offended by the flogging death of Warren, and other acts of bloodshed by the clansman. Sherman has Burtis arrested but Sands soon has him freed for lack of evidence. Burtis comes home and discovers his wife, Toots (Dorothy Kildare), has been accidently shot while resisting Sands' advances. Sands feels obligated by the threat that Burtis now holds over him, and determines to get rid of him. When Adams threatens to veto a relief bill, because the veto will add a half-million dollars to the coffers of the Sands' group, the citizens gather outside the governor's mansion and yell for him to explain the veto.