Samuel Fuller was originally set to direct this turgid racial melodrama but jumped ship, replaced by Terence Young. Lee Marvin stars as Sheriff Bascomb, the entire law enforcement department in a small Southern town, who is trying to keep a lid on local Ku Klux Klan activity. But racial tensions first simmer and then explode when Nancy Poteet (Linda Evans) is raped and the town's mayor Hardy (David Huddleston), who is also the head of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, blames an innocent black man for the crime. Also involved in the proceedings is local landowner Breck Stancill (Richard Burton), who must have modeled his Southern accent on the soupy delivery of James Mason in Mandingo.