A murderer has escaped from the prison for the criminally insane. The doctor in charge hesitates to sound the alarm and rouse the county. At the same time, Derrin Nesbitt appears at the back door of a farmhouse and asks for some water. He's been walking all day. He's young, he's good-looking, and the daughter of the house, Julie Hopkins, takes a fancy to him.
It's a nicely done thriller, with some nice characterizations about it; particularly good is Peter Swanwick as the dithery doctor, whom the audience quickly comes to view with contempt.... until he insists that the police and the local squire, who has been stalking around with a rifle, ready to shoot some one, stand back, while he goes into the barn where they think the mad man is hiding: he may not be a fast thinker, but he is no coward.
In the end, the writing is too neat, the 'normal' people too hysterical, to offer a balanced view of the rights of the individual against public safety. Still, until the very end, it is a tense and worrying scenario.