Handsome tough juvenile jailbird Miguel Antonio Enrico Francisco Estrada (John Saxon) returns home to his family's Spanish Harlem tenement apartment after serving a one-year prison sentence.

Miguel's friends in the Carlos Mendoza mob (Harry Townes) refuse to believe Miguel wants to go straight. With Miguel's intelligence and loyalty, Mendoza argues, his gang could crush the rival mob "Boss" and crooked politician, Juan Antonio Hernando Cortez (Joe De Santis), and take control of the barrio.

Miguel adamantly rejects Mendoza's offer and goes home, where his family is celebrating the birth of his uncle Alberto Estrada's seventh child. Everyone except Papa (Joseph Calleia) is happy to see him.

The next morning, Miguel returns to his old job at a laundry establishment, a front owned by Cortez. At work, Tina's ( BarBara Luna) young sweetheart Emilio (Paul Clarke) asks for Miguel's blessing on their planned marriage.

When the laundry boilers suddenly explode, Miguel realizes that Mendoza has paid Emilio to jam the valves and boldly orders the gangster to "lay off Emilio."

Later, as he is leaving Mendoza's nightclub, he is mesmerized by one of its "hostesses," the beautiful Sarita (Linda Cristal).

That night, Mendoza's men beat Miguel. Miguel staggers up to Sarita's room.

An immigration officer arrests Sarita as an illegal Cuban immigrant. Miguel asks Mendoza to arrange for her release.

Sarita then marries Miguel and moves in with his family. Cortez offers Miguel twice his salary to maintain the laundry's dangerous machinery. Miguel accepts and returns home, only to find that Sarita has left him.

Toro (Perry Lopez), a Mendoza thug jealous of Miguel, threatens his rival with a knife, and during the fight, Miguel kills him.

Later, Miguel locks Sarita in the bedroom of a penthouse apartment.

The police question Miguel about Toro's death, but he remains silent.

Seeing the police, Emilio panics and races in front of a car to his death.

At Emilio's funeral, Tina blames Miguel for the loss of her fiancé, and Papa publicly disowns his wayward son. Miguel robs the Cortez laundry. Papa arrives for work and pulls the burglar alarm. Miguel escapes the shootout, but two of Mendoza's thugs chase him across a rooftop, and when he tries to leap to another building, he falls. Papa and Sarita, kneeling over Miguel's broken body, blame themselves for his misfortune, but just before he dies, he absolves them of guilt, and receives his father's cherished blessing.

A 1959 American film-noir crime drama film directed by Paul Stanley, written & produced by Harry Kleiner, based on Irving Shulman's novel "Cry Tough" (1949), cinematography by Irving Glassberg and Philip H. Lathrop, starring John Saxon, Linda Cristal, Joseph Calleia, Harry Townes, Don Gordon, Perry Lopez, Frank Puglia, and Penny Santon.

First feature film directed by Paul Stanley.

The screenplay of the film is based on the novel of the same name by Irving Shulman. However, in the transition from print to film the Jewish Brooklyn gang of the novel became a Puerto Rican gang in Spanish Harlem.

22-year-old Saxon made this as the first under a three picture deal he had with the Hecht-Hill-Lancaster production company. It was one of several juvenile delinquent-themed movies he made.

John Saxon (1936 – 2020), born Carmine Orrico, was an American actor who worked on more than 200 film and television projects during a span of 60 years. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, agent Henry Willson saw Saxon's picture on the cover of a detective magazine. With his parents' permission, the 17-year-old Orrico contracted with Willson, and he was given the stage name John Saxon.

Saxon studied acting with Stella Adler before beginning his career as a contract actor for Universal Studios in April 1954 at $150 a week, and spent 18 months before the studio first used him in such films as "Rock, Pretty Baby" (1956) and "Portrait in Black" (1961), which earned him a reputation as a teen idol and won him a Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor. During the 1970s and 1980s, he established himself as a character actor, known for his work portraying police officers and detectives in horror films such as "Black Christmas" (1974) and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984). Saxon co-starred with Bruce Lee in "Enter the Dragon" (1973), and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for the Western "The Appaloosa" (1966). In the 1990s, Saxon occasionally appeared, with small roles in Wes Craven's "New Nightmare" (1994) and "From Dusk till Dawn" (1996).

This interesting 1950s crime drama is a sweltering, excitingly mounted, street tough New York Barrios theme ahead of its time, though not necessarily any better for being first. The shadowy low-key photography of the racial ghetto, brilliantly realized by Lathrop and Glassberg, plus Almeida's stunningly effective music score, are other stand-out features of this grim but gripping production.