After being rewarded with the job of bank guard (""dick"") o prevent future holdups, he involves his prospective son-in-law as a temporary embezzler when suckered by a con salesman to embezzle bank funds to finance a purchase of Beefsteak Mines stock - a fly-by-night mining enterprise.As he drives by a cemetery, he reveals that he is a serial killer on an earthly mission who receives divine inspirations o first marry, and then murder and rob vain and wicked women (usually rich lonely widows who do not see the menacing perversity in him):Well now, what""s it to be Lord? Another widow? How many has it been? Six? Twelve? I disremember.The platinum blonde hooker was fleeing from Indo-Chinese authorities in Saigon ("I got mixed up in a little trouble and I thought I""d stay away out of town until the gendarmes forgot about it").Although it was not the first gangster film of the talkies era (that honor went toLights of New York (1928)), it is generally considered the prototype of future gangster films.