This low budget gangster biopic from the late Fifties is typical of the pseudo historical films of this type popular then. A few, such as The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond and Al Capone, for example, were well produced, well acted, semi-serious movies that hold up well over the years. The same cannot be said of this movie.
When I first saw it with a friend years ago, we kept laughing out loud at the many anachronisms and incongruities it contains. That omnipresent Fifties jazz style soundtrack found in so many movies from that period, no matter how inappropriate, plays over the chase scenes. It is as jarringly out of place in the rural Midwestern and Southwestern locales, and the Depression era story, as when similar music is used for the 1959 Jack the Ripper. I thought that the machine guns used by Pretty Boy and his pal looked like World War II German weapons, totally wrong for the time and place.
The movie isn't really all that bad, but there is one sequence that must stand among the greatest unintentionally funny scenes of all time. A prison break has gone drastically wrong, with the criminal to be rescued from the cops accidentally shot by his friends. Later, a tribunal of mobsters holds an inquest to determine what happened. Al Lewis, as the cousin of the dead convict, keeps insisting it was an accident, until someone suggests that he deliberately shot his cousin, for personal reasons. Al Lewis throws a hysterical fit worthy of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, shrieking, sobbing, blubbering, getting down on his knees to finally blurt out that it's true, because he hated his cousin so much. He is sentenced to be executed, and Pretty Boy and his friend let go. I could not stop laughing as Al Lewis made the most of his great dramatic opportunity. I would almost recommend the movie just so viewers could watch that one scene.
Again, overall not too bad. There are certainly worse gangster biopics, for example Mad Dog Coll. Talk about bad movies!
When I first saw it with a friend years ago, we kept laughing out loud at the many anachronisms and incongruities it contains. That omnipresent Fifties jazz style soundtrack found in so many movies from that period, no matter how inappropriate, plays over the chase scenes. It is as jarringly out of place in the rural Midwestern and Southwestern locales, and the Depression era story, as when similar music is used for the 1959 Jack the Ripper. I thought that the machine guns used by Pretty Boy and his pal looked like World War II German weapons, totally wrong for the time and place.
The movie isn't really all that bad, but there is one sequence that must stand among the greatest unintentionally funny scenes of all time. A prison break has gone drastically wrong, with the criminal to be rescued from the cops accidentally shot by his friends. Later, a tribunal of mobsters holds an inquest to determine what happened. Al Lewis, as the cousin of the dead convict, keeps insisting it was an accident, until someone suggests that he deliberately shot his cousin, for personal reasons. Al Lewis throws a hysterical fit worthy of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, shrieking, sobbing, blubbering, getting down on his knees to finally blurt out that it's true, because he hated his cousin so much. He is sentenced to be executed, and Pretty Boy and his friend let go. I could not stop laughing as Al Lewis made the most of his great dramatic opportunity. I would almost recommend the movie just so viewers could watch that one scene.
Again, overall not too bad. There are certainly worse gangster biopics, for example Mad Dog Coll. Talk about bad movies!
