Racketeer Gillin is paroled from prison and immediately goes to work trying to make an illegal buck from America's war effort. With rationing in effect the black market tire business is booming. Gillen's mob sets up car lots around town where they peddle stolen tires and "new" tires milled in the gangster's factories from cheap faulty materials. People begin to die in crashes as the defective tires fail. Bill Barry leads his fellow defense plant workers on a crusade to uncover the source of the black market rubber and bring the guilty to justice. Although clearly intended to warn the public about black market tire smuggling, Rubber Racketeers holds it own as a saga of mobsters versus an irate public.
Production
Desperate studio squeezing rubber shortage hysteria for 67 tight minutes
Acting
Ricardo Cortez's exquisitely oily parolee grin
Director
Harold Young
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Released during peak WWII rationing when real rubber shortages had Americans patching tires with garden hoses.
Monogram Pictures cranked this out in days using sets from other productions—those 'tire factories' were probably bakeries last week.
US
