Bad Day at Black Rock
“Just the way it happened!”
John SturgesCast
Spencer Tracy 
Robert Ryan 
Anne Francis 
Dean Jagger 
Walter Brennan John Ericson
Credits
Written by: Millard Kaufman
Plot
In 1945 a one-armed stranger, John J. Macreedy, steps off a train in a tiny desert town that has not had a visitor in years. The townspeople turn hostile as he asks about a Japanese-American farmer, and he slowly learns what they did to him. Spencer Tracy leads a cast of tough supporting actors.
Sinekatalog’s take
A lean, 81-minute thriller that uses CinemaScope landscape as a trap. It is about prejudice and guilt without ever lecturing, and Tracy's calm is its backbone.Sinekatalog’s own editorial review – not a user or critic quote.
Ratings
IMDb: 7.6 / 10 (27,193 votes)
IMDb rating and vote count from the IMDb ratings dataset (October 2026). Scores change over time.