A child stumbles across an edgy man in an abandoned warehouse Fearing that the boy has witnessed the murder he has just committed, he grabs him and they go on the run.

From this taut beginning, the film develops into a study of the pair on the run and of the demons that pursue them. Bogarde in one of his earlier starring roles, bristles with abrupt violence and fiery magnetism as the everyday man who has stepped outside the law, and his gradual redemption and growing fondness for young Robbie (played by Jon Whitely) is believable and touching.

Directed by Charles Crichton, the film produces a tense, forbidding atmosphere with imagery and occasionally echoing that of Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter.