Der Killer mit dem Babygesicht

Chronological with some name changing & liberties to some minor facts, PBF is not bad. If you know nothing of PBF outside his name as I, it is worth a glimpse & held me. Did capture era with fashion, costumes, & props. Gave me a realization of the desperate times, caliber of female companions, glamour & glamourlessness, & extreme ups & downs of a gangster of his time.

I will not teach you anything by telling that the early sixties was for Hollywood the period of gangster biographies: MURDER INC, RISE AND FALL OF LEGS DIAMOND, PURPLE GANG, YOUNG DILLINGER, MAD DOG COLL, BONNIE PARKER STORY, BABY FACE NELSON, PORTRAIT OF A MOBSTER, PAY OR DIE, KING OF THE ROARING 20's...all more or less small budgets, but all effective, sharp, brutal. This one makes no exception to the rule. John Ericson is the main element of this also very good directed movie from a film maker whose it is I suppose the best job. It is obviously not a huge budget film, but it is sharply made, with an excellent music score. Just enjoy, this feature is not so hard to get.

Handsome John Ericson plays the title role in this sluggish version of the "Robin Hood Bank Robber". Although Ericson's performance is inert, the women all go for him.There's the usual-for-the-era voiceover narration filling in the details, and while there are some nice location shots, there's also a series of annoying sequences in which the FBI man and the sheriff get together to discuss the case and advance the plot cheaply.

The most interesting thing about the movie is an early small role for Peter Falk as an early associate in Ericson's financial endeavors, and that's not much.

John Ericson has the title role in this minuscule budget independent film about Pretty Boy Floyd one of the legendary public enemies of the 30s. Ericson might well have been a good fit for the part had this been done at a major studio, but this film had more errors than facts about its subject.

The saddest commentary on this film was its elimination of the man who led the hunt against Floyd, FBI agent Melvin Purvis who later got his due in other films about the notorious outlaw. Purvis died in 1960, some saw an accidental shooting, some say a suicide. But he was persona non grata to J. Edgar Hoover who resented the publicity that Purvis got for bringing down people like Dillinger, Floyd, and Machine Gun Kelly.

In this film Floyd starts out like Jesse James, a folk hero to the poor Oklahoma farmers from whence he came. But in the end when fame and notoriety came he lost his prestige with them.

Floyd at the time was accused of participation in the Kansas City Massacre, but he denied it and there's evidence enough to show he probably wasn't there. This film has him as one of the hoods who killed 4 FBI agents and led to the arming of those agents.

Peter Falk has a small part in this film and he's always noticeable and good. Also here making a screen debut is Al 'Grandpa Munster' Lewis. He's in the sequence involving the Kansas City Massacre and the telling of that is completely incoherent.

Not the best version of Charles Arthur Floyd's saga.

This movie came out in 1959, the same year I was born in Oklahoma. I liked this movie and felt that John Ericson did a decent job playing Pretty Boy, even though he looked more like a Ricky Nelson with a James Dean type of murky frown. Ericson, five years later, would play "Pan" in one of my favorite Tony Randall movies, "The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao". Also, in 1965, he played opposite to Ann Francis in "Honey West". Pretty Boy Floyd can be compared to a modern Jesse James. Their home folks and friends help protect and hid them for law enforcement. Their Robin Hood deeds bought them country folk loyalty and legendary status in their respective areas. The movie didn't display this well. This movie could have been better. It left out so much, example being his relationship to his family. I remember a story where he pretended to whip his son in order to appease his wife. Not once in this movie do you hear the name Melvin Purvis, the head G-man under Hoover at the time. Did Purvis and Floyd hold phone conversations ? or did I get that from another Hollywood movie ? It was never proved that Pretty Boy was involved in the Kansas City Massacre. This movie's reenactment looked more like a large alley than a Union Station parking lot. It was rather weak, but what do you expect from a 1959 flick. The best thing about this movie is seeing Barry Newman (the lawyer in "Petrocelli" - 1974 T.V. series) and Al Lewis (grandpa in the "Munsters" T.V. sitcom) in their first screen appearances. It also has Peter Falk (Columbo) in one of his early performances. I think Al Lewis's performance was the best overall. He was very convincing in playing the unstable bad guy.