Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

People are voting emotionally.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Considering this black and white film was released eight (8) decades ago, I will say that I was quite impressed with how well the story line holds up. There are five main characters in this crime/drama film which stars Ida Lupino as a young telephone operator named Stella Goodwin who lives at home with her parents who show little affection towards each other and Stella is still dating the old high school quarterback named George Watkins played by Eddie Albert (Green Acres fame). Now George has a good job in Brooklyn and he loves Stella and some day would like to marry her. Stella though is bored and very restless and she yearns for some excitement to get her out of her dreary Brooklyn neighborhood which her boyfriend George Watkins just does not understand because George is very content with his work, his neighborhood and his girlfriend Stella.Strolling into town is a two bit hood named Harold Goff (played by John Garfield) who has grand ideas that he is going to run Brooklyn and live the high life which includes having as many broads as he so desires. One of those so called broads that he desires is the naive and high strung Stella Goodwin. There is good chemistry and there is bad chemistry. Harold toying with Stella's need for instant gratification and plenty of excitement makes for some bad chemistry, which very quickly implodes not only in Stella's old boyfriend George Watkin's face, but also in Stella's fathers' face Jonah Goodwin played by Thomas Mitchell and his best friend and fishing buddy Olaf Johnson played by John Qualen. Now Jonah and Olaf both work hard during the day and they love to escape in the evening in their tiny conservative fishing boat onto the Brooklyn waterways whether they catch any fish or not, they just want to put their troubles aside for a few hours and enjoy each others company. But trouble follows them in the name of the two bit hood Harold Goff who extorts out of these two fisherman a weekly sum of five (5) dollars to avoid anything harming their boat and/or their personal bodies.The film is interspersed with some light comedy via the many humorous conversations that take place amongst the five main characters as well as by the local restaurant owner Caroline Pomponette, played by Odette Myrtil, who is chasing Olaf (who is the cook) around the restaurant kitchen and even out on the fishermans wharf to marry her and have children with her which Olaf wants nothing to do with her.The film ending is both redeeming and rewarding and right to the bitter end the film continues with some light comedy as well as drama. You know the old adage, "crime doesn't pay"? Well, lets just say that I enjoyed Out Of the Fog even though it is close to a century old now. I give the film a decent 6 out of 10 rating.

Racketeer Goff extorts money from small boat owners like Jonah and Olaf, while romancing Jonah's daughter! With an equation like this, something's got to give.The movie's very much a product of the leftish 1930's. Note the way it lavishes praise on "ordinary" people, and how happiness is seen as coming to accept one's own ordinariness. Note also the words the vicious Goff is made to say— phrases like "superior people" and "only the strong" surviving. Clearly, Goff amounts to an enemy of ordinary people, and on the eve of WWII, that amounts to a stand-in for fascism. In fact, the movie itself amounts to an allegory of a fascist movement (Goff) that by 1941 had conquered much of Europe, holding its ordinary people either in thrall (Stella) or in fear (Jonah & Olaf).Now, there's nothing wrong with a sub-text like this, except the movie's pretty stagey (a single sound-stage set) and the characters one-dimensional, likely an unfortunate result of the allegorical sub-text. Anyway, there are helpful deposits of humor from the Jewish characters that apparently retains some flavor of the original play. However, the screenplay really cops out by having "God", instead of Goff's victims, take care of the oppressor. In fact, Olaf is made so meek and submissive he's almost craven and unworthy of his dreams. But, I suspect the writers were up against a Production Code that would insist on punishing the two fishermen had they gone through with their plan. Thus God is called in to do the job instead. To me, however, carrying through the plan would have shown that the oppressed can rise up and free themselves without metaphysical assistance, a valuable lesson, I believe, Code or no Code. All in all, the film remains very much a Hollywood adaptation of a much grittier New York play (IMDB Trivia), and a disappointment considering the talent involved.

John Garfield must have felt right back home with this gritty and relevant social drama that was originally on Broadway in 1939 as a Group Theater production. He fits the lead of Goff who's a dirty little protection racket gangster, terrorizing the gentle people who inhabit the Sheepshead Bay area of Brooklyn.What must have annoyed Garfield no end was the ethnic cleansing of the story, the uprooting of all the Jewishness from the original play to the film. Out Of The Fog was originally entitled The Gentle People which was written by Irwin Shaw and ran for 141 performances on Broadway in 1939. If Garfield had not been in Hollywood in 1939 he could easily have been in the lead on Broadway.On Broadway the part was played by Franchot Tone. Garfield fits the role perfectly, but I certainly would love to have seen what Tone did with the part. The Gentle People was hardly the kind of property that his studio MGM would have bought. Over at Leo the Lion Franchot Tone was rarely out of his dinner clothes, it was later when freelanced that he showed he was capable of this kind of role on screen.The parts played by the two older men who are among several of Garfield's 'clients' are John Qualen and Thomas Mitchell. On Broadway they had distinctly Jewish last names and were played by Lee J. Cobb and Sam Jaffe. Garfield approaches these two men who are partners in a fishing boat and offers them 'protection' for $5.00 a week, a special rate because he's liking Mitchell's daughter Ida Lupino.Shaw's play is of course an anti-Nazi allegory, but Warner Brothers decided to take the ethnicity away from the victims. Still the message is comes through loud and clear as Qualen and Mitchell decide that when the law doesn't work, they have to take matters in their own hands. As always the mark of a good play or film is the development of lesser characters like Aline McMahon who is the longstanding perpetually suffering mother with continual aches and pains. Also Eddie Albert who plays Ida's steady reliable beau who looks rather plain next to Garfield's flash. Robert Homans as the Irish cop on the beat who delivers a final summation for the results of the story has some words to the wise. There are times when conventional law enforcement won't do the job.

I found this movie painful to watch. Jack Warner should have been ashamed to release it quite frankly. I love John Garfield, Ida Lupino and the others as actors but Anatole Litvak, the director, went seriously off the rails with this one. He really should have reigned in John Garfield a little.Indeed, John Garfield's character of Goff is so one-dimensionally nasty that you can't but cheer when he gets his come-uppance (as the movie code would have demanded). Ida Lupino was so stupidly infatuated with him, even knowing the racketeer was harassing her father, that one can only hold her in contempt. Qualen is so spineless and MacMahon is so loud and off-putting (her character yes, but over the top!) that I could barely stand it. And the cops and judge...no wonder people make jokes about them! The only lights I could find in this movie were Thomas Mitchell's character of Jonah and to a lesser extent Eddie Albert's character of George. They save the movie from total disaster.I wanted to love this movie because I love the actors. Sadly, I can only say I got through it.