Plot
Huckleberry Finn is a half-literate son of Pap Finn, an abusive drunk. One night, his father arrives and takes Huck from his foster family. Jealous of Huck's money being kept away, Pap attacks Huck, but eventually passes out from exhaustion.
Huck fakes his own death and runs away. He is accompanied by Jim, a slave who worked for Huck's foster family and escaped after a slave trader offered to buy him. The duo follow the Mississippi River to Cairo, Illinois, so Jim can escape to freedom without being arrested.
They come across a wanted poster for Jim, falsely saying that he murdered Huck. Jim and Huck find a sinking barge one night, and Jim notices Huck's father dead on the ship. Huck notices two robbers leaving another to drown in a room as the water comes crashing through. Huck and Jim's canoe sinks, but they steal the robbers' raft as the barge completely sinks underwater.
The raft is later struck by a steamboat, and Huck is at first captured by a few men, then taken to the home of the Graingerford family. Huck lies about his life to the Graingerfords to avoid suspicion. The Graingerfords are in a feud with another family, the Shepherdsons. Huck even befriends Billy Graingerford, the Graingerford patriarch's son, but is horrified that Jim has been found by the family and become a slave again. Billy's older sister Sophie runs away to marry a Shepherdson, thus a short firefight happens, killing all the male Graingerfords, including Billy.
Jim and Huck find themselves past Cairo, and two con men, the Duke and the King, join them. The quartet land at Phelps Landing, and the King and the Duke impersonate British members of the Wilks family to con three sisters -- Mary Jane, Julia, and Susan -- out of their fortune.
Meanwhile, Jim has been taken to prison for Huck's murder, and tells Huck about his father's death. Huck rebukes Jim and puts the money in the coffin of a recently deceased Wilkes family member. He exposes the King and the Duke as con men to Mary Jane the next day, and asks her not to tell the town until 10:00 that night, when a steamboat to Cairo departs.
Dr. Robinson does not trust the King and the Duke's scheme, and the real members of the family whom they were impersonating show up. The town dig up the buried coffin where the money was put, and thus tar and feather the Duke and the King, and become an angry mob. Huck breaks Jim out of prison, but they are spotted by the mob.
While escaping, Huck is shot in the back. Jim sacrifices his chance to escape to freedom and carries Huck to the mob, allowing himself to be hanged. Before the mob can kill Jim, however, the Wilks sisters arrive and stop them. The mob set Jim free, and Huck passes out.
Huck wakes up in the Wilks homestead and learns that Jim's master Miss Watson, who was also one of Huck's caretakers, has died and set Jim free in her will. The other caretaker, the Widow Douglas, plans on civilizing Huck, but Huck, narrating the story, says, "I've been there before." The film ends with Huck running off into the sunset.
