4. Legion of Terror (1936)
Frank Marshall and his buddy Slim Hewitt are sworn in as postal inspectors in Washington DC. A bomb arrives from Stanfield Connecticut bound for the senate office and Senator Morton. Marshall and Hewitt are sent to Connecticut to investigate. On the train, Frank makes friends with a Stanfield resident - Nancy Foster. In Stanfield, the men get new names and work at the local factory. They soon realise that the Hood Legion has control of the whole town, including the factory. Frank and Slim infiltrate the organisation, but Don, Nancy's brother is being blocked from writing an expose of the group. The whole town ignore him. He is given a mock trial by the Legion and shot. When Frank expresses his condolences to Nancy, she calls him out as a Legion member and hypocrite. Both Nancy and Slim approach the newspaper editor with the story but he won't run it because he is a senior member of the Legion. The editor gets the Legion to kidnap Slim and Nancy. Frank goes to the Governor and secures the National Guard. Everything ends happily. The Legion are a thinly veiled reference to the KKK. It is uncertain why they sent a bomb to a Senator and the motivation for their existence is unclear. It seems to be more of a sinister Masonic Lodge rather than an all out xenophobic, bigoted, anti Catholic, anti Semitic KKK type. It is a more innocent film than others at the list. At the end of the film, Americans are told that they are a nation of 'joiners' and to be wary of joining groups like the KKK.