Gang Bullets

When the theaters were owned by the major studios in the 30's and 40's the price of a ticket got you a feature film, cartoon, news reel, and what is now called a 'B' movie. "Gang Bullets" is one from Monogram, a major player during this era. If this film is judged against others in the same class I would put it in the upper 25%. Starring Anne Nagel (a rare top billing), Robert Kent, and Charles Towbridge it tells the story of a fast talking racketeer who thinks the district attorney can't touch him. The law has other ideas but can they capture the criminal? The 63 minute film moves along under the direction of Lambert Hillyer and the watchful eye of Scott Dunlap. There are hacked up versions including the internet archive version which is not as sharp and shorter. The DVD I purchased is much better quality and available for under $5.00. Abe Meyer, who made his living providing source music for many of these films did an adequate job with this one. A good watch.

Forced out of one city by some extralegal methods of one district attorney, gangster Morgan Wallace simply moves to another to set up shop. Wallace is into all kinds of illegal rackets and has the police and DA really stumped. The press is clamoring for DA Charles Trowbridge's scalp, a prospect not pleasing to Trowbridge's daughter Anne Nagel and her fiancé Robert Kent who is also Trowbridge's number one assistant.

Gang Bullets comes from out of Monogram Pictures so you can't expect too much and believe me you won't get it. The film has some interesting ideas that don't seem to follow up. At one point Wallace talks about building his racket by letting a few suckers win some big pots at his gambling establishment and then becoming advertisements. It sounded like an interesting film idea that is never followed up on. There's also an interlude where two of Wallace's henchmen bring a third wounded comrade into some woman's home with her 12 year old boy. It plays like a bit from another film entirely. In fact that whole premise was used later on with much greater effect in The Desperate Hours.

In the end Trowbridge goes to some extraordinary lengths to bring down Wallace. But even the end is rather anti-climatic.

Stuff like Gang Bullets was done so much better over at Warner Brothers.

GANG BULLETS is a low rent mobster story from cheapie studio Monogram Pictures, notorious for making endless B-movies on a shoestring. This film's about the efforts of an entire city's law and justice departments to bring a notorious criminal to book. Morgan Wallace plays said criminal, 'Big Bill' Anderson, with relish and certainly dominates the film with his larger-than-life persona. I loved the sly joke when he tells the cops that his tax records are up to date so they can't bring him to book.

With a running time clocking in at just over an hour, GANG BULLETS is never boring for a moment and the plot constantly twists and turns as first the cops and then the criminals get the upper hand. The usual clichés of the gangster genre are played out here, including protection rackets, stings, and shoot-outs, and they're all handled with surprising aplomb given the paucity of the budget. The film lacks any big-name actors for recognition but works anyway despite this.

This movie came bundled with 7 other old gangster films, and was purchased by a friend of mine at a bargain price.. Gang Bullets is the second one I have watched from it. The quality of the prints is not great, but I don't find that too distracting. Unfortunately, I had to rate the film on the low end. The storyline concerns a Mob Boss and his attempt at controling an unnamed city and the efforts of law enforcement to find evidence in which to arrest him. So yeah, it certainly held some promise.

Yet, it'l ends up being mostly dull, and contains some really stiff performances. Morgan Wallace is somewhat interesting in the role of Big Bill, the crime boss, and Ann Nagel is attractive and provides some emotion. But the rest of the acting seems sedate, when you would have expected more intensity. So essentially I enjoyed the plot, but found mysel bored at times .

After watching this recently, it really dawned on me the big gap between crime stories on film of the 1930s to ones made from 1940 on. The '30s look and sound so more dated than ones just a half dozen years later. Part of that is good because the 1930s expressions are fun to hear and the films are shorter and faster-paced, and a bit edgier.

The cops that appear are really different. Even though there is a lot of moralizing - which is fine with me, such as prefaces right before the feature warning of the dangers of crimes and having criminals glorified, the films themselves actually make the cops look like thugs as well as the criminals!

The police are shown treating suspects as if they are already convicted felons, roughing them up, denying them a lawyer, detaining them illegally, etc. - and they are supposed to be the good guys?! I am no Liberal by a longshot but no wonder laws were put in to protect average citizens from the police, if that's the way things were. In fact, I was shocked to hear the term "police brutality" in this movie. I always thought that expression came from the 1960s, but here it is in a 1938 film. However, in an interesting twist, in this film two crooks fake "police brutality" to get out of testifying before a grand jury against their vicious gangland boss. Interesting things happen after that, and this film gets better and better as it goes on. The main crook, played by Morgan Wallace, is really fascinating in his brutal attitude. At least they still made the bad guys worse people than those 'brutal' cops.

These '30 gangster movies. may be hokey, corny, extremely dated and inadvertently not favorable to the police here and there, but they don't mess around by being too talky. They get to the point and they are simply fun to watch.

Note: The IMDb board here hasn't listed this as available on DVD but that's how I watched it yesterday. It's part of a 4-film DVD pack entitled "Mobster Movies."