It was directed by Curtis Bernhardt from a screenplay by Sydney Boehm and Lester Cole, based on a play by Alan R. Clark and Bradbury Foote.

[2] Former WWII bomber pilot and recent ex-mercenary flyer Steven Kenet crashes his car into a river, trying to cover the evident strangulation murder of his wife with a suicide.

Surgery could relieve Kenet's brain injury, but he refuses to consent to it, stalling for time till he can find a way to clear himself and be able to take care of his six year-old son.

Henry Cronner, janitor of the apartment building where Kennet's wife's boss, Willard Whitcombe lives, attempts to blackmail him over his potential role in her death.

Kenet hides in Lorrison's car to escape from the hospital, then breaks into Whitcombe's apartment and recreates a scene resembling that revealed under the drug.

Whitcombe recounts how he had tried to end his affair with the greedy Helen Kenet after finding her husband unconscious in his apartment, but she threatened to cause a scandal and ruin any chance of him becoming a partner in his firm.

A contemporary review in The New York Times said: "As straight movie melodrama, employing modern psychotherapy, High Wall is a likely lot of terrors, morbid and socially cynical.