Our Live Tweet #Noirvember movie for Sat., Nov. 21: Lawrence Tierney in THE HOODLUM (1951)

The name of this week’s The Gangsters All Here movie gets straight to the point. The movie is called The Hoodlum — a title so generic, it’s the movie equivalent of slapping a white-with-black-lettering label on a can of beans. But there’s nothing generic about the guy who plays the title role…

It’s Lawrence Tierney!

The Hoodlum is directed by Max Nosseck, who directed Tierney in his breakout role in Dillinger (1945). But by the time of this movie, both Tierney’s and Nosseck’s careers had hit bottom — Tierney due to a lot of jail time earned by off-screen drinking and brawling, and Nosseck because he went from Dillinger right b;lkack to the B- and worse-type movies he’d previously been doing.

One could almost say that the bitterness of these two men burst forth in this movie and made it work. Tierney plays Vincent Lubeck, a career criminal whose career is so vast, it’s lovingly detailed in the movie’s prologue. Lubeck gets paroled due to a lucky break, but he still comes out of jail declaring that life has never given him a chance and will continue to not do so. So when Lubeck gets a good look at both (a) a loot-filled armored car that passes his way every day, and (b) his brother’s sob-sister-and-virginal girlfriend, what do you think are the chances that he’ll try to nab both?

On a scale of 1 to 5 fannies, I give this movie a 4-½. Tierney sizzles from start to finish, and the movie is uncompromising in nearly every aspect of its subject matter (especially for 1951). I deduct a half-star only because the movie begins with that weariest of tropes, a plea to the jailhouse warden from the convict’s elderly mother. But if you stick with the movie right to the end, you’ll see that even this cliche gets turned on its head.

Our Live Tweet movie for Sat., Nov. 14: Lizabeth Scott in TOO LATE FOR TEARS (1949)

Usually, our The Gangsters All Here movies start out with the main characters already established as gangsters. But this week’s movie, Too Late for Tears, takes a different approach. What if a set of a particular set of circumstances was dropped in an Everyman’s lap to make him turn into a gangster?

Actually, in this case, it’s not an Everyman, but an Everywoman — social-climbing housewife Jane Palmer (Lizabeth Scott). And it’s not one circumstance, but sixty thousand of them. One night, Jane and her milquetoast husband Alan (Arthur Kennedy) are driving along a dark highway in their convertible, when a passing car happens to drop a satchel in their back seat. Upon further examination, the Palmers discover that the satchel contains $60,000 ($584,000 in 2015 dollars, if you’re counting).

Alan is all set to surrender the money to the police. But then Jane opens the satchel and spreads the money out on their bed — just so that she can get a look at it — and suddenly…

Not even some very assertive outside forces — in the forms of Dan Duryea and Don DeFore — can deter Jane in her lust for lucre. Besides being a riveting film-noir, the movie poses an interesting question: Just how many (or few) steps would it take us to let the gangster within us run wild?

No doubt about it — on a scale of 1 to 5 fannies, this movie gets a 5. A tightly woven screenplay by Roy Huggins (who went on to create a little TV series named “The Fugitive”) is mounted on the able shoulders of Lizabeth Scott, who runs with it to the finish.

Our Live Tweet movie for Sat., Oct. 24: THE BIG COMBO (1955)

This week, The Gangsters All Here makes a bid for legitimacy with a film-noir gem titled The Big Combo. It stars Cornel Wilde as Police Lt. Leonard Diamond, who is on a one-man quest to bring down Mr. Brown (ultra-slick Richard Conte), a racketeer who appears to control everything and everyone in town except for Lt. Diamond. The worthy supporting cast includes Helen Walker (in her final film role), Jean Wallace, and Brian Donlevy (who seems to play a slobbering syncophant in about every other one of these types of movies).

And my dear online blogger-friend Salome at BNoirDetour would never forgive me if I didn’t mention two other memorable supporting actors: Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman as Mr. Brown’s henchmen Fante and Mingo. When I first watched this movie, I regarded this less-than-dynamic duo as simply the movie’s answer to Of Mice and Men‘s simpletons George and Lennie. But Ms. Salome finds a fascinating homoerotic subtext to this pair’s relationship, right down to their sleeping in separate but nearby beds. You decide.

Are you kidding? With all of the aforementioned juicy plot elements, plus a jazzy score from Laura‘s David Raksin, this movie can’t possibly get less than 5 out of 5 fannies. You’ll want to stay put right up to the movie’s final shot (which unapologetically apes, er, does a homage to a legendary film from the 1940’s). See you this Saturday!

Our Live Tweet movie for Sat., Oct. 17: Broderick Crawford in THE MOB (1951)

This week, Broderick Crawford joins our The Gangsters All Here Rogue Gallery. The Mob stars Crawford as Johnny Damico, a tough-skinned cop who, for spoiler reasons I won’t go into here, goes undercover to infiltrate a waterfront crime ring. Waterfront corruption was a rich vein of storylines for Columbia Pictures to mine — it earned movie immortality for Marlon Brando three years later in On the Waterfront — but Crawford definitely makes the territory his own. Add fine supporting work from Ernest Borgnine, Richard Kiley, and John Marley (two decades before his menacing role in The Godfather), and how can you lose?

(CORRECTION: Last week, I mistakenly touted our weekly movie entry, Machine Gun Kelly, as Charles Bronson’s movie debut. In fact, Bronson has a walk-on role here as a waterfront worker, and he had several years of movie work behind him by the time he did Machine Gun Kelly, which was actually Bronson’s starring debut. My apologies.) 

On a scale of 1 to 5 fannies, this movie rates an on-the-nose 5. Despite contemporary reviews that dismissed The Mob as just another shoot-’em-up, this one has it all. There are gritty action scenes, nail-biting suspense, and best of all, Broderick Crawford in a role that shows his softer side along with his well-known gruffiness. You won’t want to miss this one!

Our Live Tweet movie for Sat., Oct. 10: Charles Bronson in MACHINE-GUN KELLY (1958)

To The Gangsters All Here Rogues Gallery of Walter Matthau, Steve McQueen, Dick Powell, James Cagney, and Hugh Beaumont, we now add Charles Bronson! In his first starring role, Bronson plays the title role of George “Machine-Gun” Kelly, a tough-talking, fist-waving gangster who nevertheless shrinks at the sight of any symbols of death. Kelly can spit out some neat lead with his Thompson gat, but just wave your poison-icon tattoo at him and he shrinks like a little kid!

On a scale of 1 to 5 fannies, I rate this movie a 3. It’s not a perfect gangster movie, but it has enough disparate elements to keep you fascinated, not the least of which is a crazily incongruous score by “Gilligan’s Island” composer Gerald Fried. And where else will you get the chance to see Charles Bronson and “The Dick Van Dyke Show’s” Morey Amsterdam share scenes in a movie?

Live Tweet movie for Sat., Sept. 26: THE STREET WITH NO NAME (1948)

When a 1948 movie opens with a message crawl from J. Edgar Hoover, you can bet it’s going to be a love letter to the F.B.I. This week’s gangster-infested scumfest, The Street with No Name, tells how the Feds sent in one of their own to infiltrate a nasty gang and demobilize it — because, darn it, you know that’s what J. Edgar insisted upon!

When a crime wave blows through “Central City” (which looks suspiciously like Los Angeles), FBI Inspector Briggs (Lloyd Nolan) provides rookie agent Gene Cordell (Mark Stevens) with the new identity of “George Manly” (Note that last name!) and sends him undercover. Soon enough, “Manly” becomes part of Central City’s major gang, led by mastermind Alec Stiles. Don’t be fooled by that milquetoast name — we know right away that Alec Stiles must be bad, because he’s played by…

Richard Widmark!

Looks like the FBI and George Manly have their hands full with this one!

On a scale of 1 to 5 fannies, I rate this movie a 4. This is good-guys-vs.-bad-guys played to the hilt, the “good” represented by a ripe-for-parody monotone narrator and frequent unsubtle nods to the virtue of the FBI, and the “bad” represented by gangsters spouting endless street slang, hoisting drinks, and packing rods. Did I mention that Richard Widmark is in this movie?

Live Tweet movie for Sat., Sept. 19: James Cagney in KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE (1950)

First off, please note the new time for The Gangsters All Here Live Tweet. We’ve switched from 12 noon over to 2:30 p.m. EST on Saturdays, just before #SatMat. So enjoy a hearty lunch, and then join us for some gangster grittiness!

Secondly, we’re switching to our new time slot in style with 1950’s Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. This movie is so perfect for our Live Tweet, this week we’re not even bothering with a review. Instead, we’re only going to list the movie’s highlights.

A Warner Bros. gangster picture! Starring James Cagney at his sociopathic best! And Barbara Peyton at her masochistic lowest! With crooked cops! Sleazy lawyers! An outrageous body count! And an intro with a richly glorified cameo from William Frawley just before he hit it big with I Love Lucy!

You have to ask? On a scale of 1 to 5 fannies, this movie gets a solid . You won’t want to move from your seat from this one. Believe us, once Cagney & Co. get your nerves pulsating, the only part of you that won’t be moving will be your butt!

Follow our Twitter page @BMovieBoss, use the hashtag #GangstersAllHere to comment on the movie while it’s running, and your Saturday afternoon will be off to a bang! See you at 2:30 p.m. EST this Saturday!

Live Tweet movie for Sat., Sept. 5, 2015 – Steve McQueen in THE (GREAT) ST. LOUIS BANK ROBBERY (1959)

I’m afraid I just can’t resist star power. This week’s movie features Steve McQueen in an early role.

Inexplicably, the movie is titled The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery in all of its advertising, even though the movie’s credits insist that the title is simply The St. Louis Bank Robbery. My guess is that the movie couldn’t conjure up enough attention or business with its original title, so they added the word Great to make it sound more prestigious. (In any case, once you view the movie, you’ll see that the word “great” is quite the misnomer in this instance.)

McQueen plays George, a college drop-out. (The movie makes this character trait explicit by having George walk around in his former letterman’s jacket throughout the movie’s first half.) George is coerced by his ex-girlfriend’s brother Gino into being the getaway driver for a bank heist that is being planned by the head of Gino’s gang. Along the way, there’s bad dialogue and acting, a smattering of homoeroticism, and an obnoxious pseudo-pop background song that would have been better used on “Sesame Street.”

The movie was based on an actual 1953 St. Louis bank robbery. The film’s makers made much of the fact that many of the police officers and local citizens who were involved in the robbery reenacted their parts in the movie. (This explains some of the amateurish acting in the movie’s climax but not the rest of the film.)

(Useless trivia: According to the Internet Movie Database, this movie has recently been remade with an updated story and re-titled American Heist, starring Adrien Brody and Star Wars’ Hayden Christiansen. It was to have been released this past July but has yet to see the light of an American movie screen.)

On a scale of 1 to 5, I rate this movie a 3. The movie is 89 minutes long, and the pacing is leisurely at some points. Also, there are moments when McQueen’s acting raises this movie to a level worthy of serious consideration. But give the movie the benefit of the doubt, and eventually its truly insipid moments will shine through.

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