Mitraillette Kelly

The clothes and cars are of the 1930s, but sometimes the score sounds like something from the 30s, and other times, with bongos, it sounds like the soundtrack of a beatnik movie of the early 60s and late 50s. Even stranger, the actors talk like Beatniks lots of times. There is little bank robbery action here. Roger Corman did not have the same budget Warren Beatty had with "Bonny and Clyde" over at Warner Brothers, so he had to make do with this largely being a relationship and character study picture with scenes that could be staged on cheaply dressed sets.

This is notable and worthwhile for several reasons. It is an early role for Charles Bronson in the title role. In this highly fictional biopic Kelly is afraid of things that remind him of death - coffins and skulls for example. His fear of coffins plays heavily in one botched bank robbery when he encounters a funeral procession and is feet from the coffin and ends up being a no show for the job. Also, Susan Cabot, often remembered for playing the lead in Wasp Woman, is a dragon lady as Kelly's girlfriend. She seems to be much bolder and more bloodthirsty than Kelly is. In fact, Kelly had a wife that encouraged him in his life of crime and got him into machine guns. But the biggest reason to watch this - Morey Amsterdam. If you only remember him as Buddy Sorrell on the Dick Van Dyke Show in the 60s, and the bane of the existence of yes man Mel Cooley, then this performance is a revelation. He is a wacko but cowardly comrade of Kelly's that Kelly "teaches a lesson" to in a most unique way. This does not improve his overall mood, and though he has only a supporting role it is memorable.

Machine Gun Kelly and his wife were actually taken alive as shown in the film. For all of his bravado Kelly didn't want to die. Kelly died in prison in 1954. His wife was paroled in 1958, the same year this film was released. I wonder if she ever saw it?

Just one more thing - Connie Gilchrest plays Ma Becker here, Kelly's girlfriend's hard boiled brothel running mother. I kept thinking that if this picture had been made ten years later, Shelley Winters could have done a lot with this part, maybe even stolen the picture. I guess Corman and I were on the same page, because in 1970 he cast Winters as Ma Barker in "Bloody Mama" in a very similar kind of role.

Another drive-in special from the guy who really knew how to make them, the ever resourceful Roger Corman. No 1958 teen-ager in the back row, front, or in-between really cared about subtleties of plot, characterization, or other adult stuff like historical accuracy. Just make the big screen go fast, tough, and sexy, especially for the hot-and-heavy back row who probably didn't care if it was Doris Day as long as they had a place to park in the dark. Seeing the movie 50 years later, I now know that Bronson can smile and squint at the same time. Actually, he's more animated here than the Mt. Rushmore super-star he later turned into. I doubt younger viewers can appreciate just how different he was from the pretty-boy 1950's dominated by the likes of Tab, Troy, and Rock. Once you saw that Bronson mug, you didn't forget.

Other reviewers are right. It's colorful characters here that count and there's a good bunch of them, especially the tough-as-nails old bordello madam. You know it's a drive-in special when the producers don't even try to disguise the cat-house with a dance hall cosmetic. And where did they get that really exotic idea of the mountain lion. My guess is that Corman stopped somewhere in the desert where gas stations of old used roadside zoos as a hyped- up come-on. I thought they would use the critter to kill off one of the characters, especially the oily Amsterdam. My favorite scene is where tough guys Jack Lambert and Bronson square off in a hard-eye squinting contest. I doubt that you could pass a laser beam between them. Anyway, the movie was not exactly Oscar bait in 1958, but even now it's still a lot more tacky fun than a lot of the prestige productions of that year.

Machine Gun Kelly is directed by Roger Corman and written by Robert Wright Campbell. It stars Charles Bronson, Susan Cabot, Morey Amsterdam, Jack Lambert, Frank DeKova and Connie Gilchrist. Music is by Gerald Fried and cinematography by Floyd Crosby.

George Francis Barnes Junior, AKA: Machine Gun Kelly, was a prohibition era American hoodlum, this movie is an interpretation of his time in the public enemy limelight.

Never climbing up to high energy rat-a-tat-tat action levels, Corman's "mini" biopic none the less breezes along and remains fascinating throughout. The makers paint Kelly as something of a weak willed type of guy who is impotent without his Thompson Submachine Gun. This is a man firmly dangling on the end of the puppet strings being twirled and pulled by his Moll, Flo Becker. Oh he's not beyond slapping his woman around, or bullying one of his weaker willed accomplices, but Corman and Campbell assure us that Kelly is not to be gloried, even giving him a pathological fear of dying that shows him in this movie form as something of a coward.

Of course this is just a movie, and for historical facts and figures et al, folks are warned this is not a biography to use as a starting point to explore Kelly's reputation…

Bronson as Kelly is wonderfully broody and he handles the fluctuations in Kelly's psyche with convincing skill. Cabot as Flo is a sex-bomb, and deviously appealing with it she is as well, while Amsterdam gets to play a character so colourful and kinked, it wouldn't be out of place in classic era film noir. Crosby was an ace cinematographer, capable of making the cheapest crime movie production looking a whole lot more expensive, such is the case here. While Fried provides a progressive jazz musical score that ranges from Ant Hill Mob like breeziness to funky piano based frenzies.

All in all, a good gangster movie that benefits from some well written and performed characterisations. 7/10

Most Bronson fans will fudge their way through his mid to late 80's flicks in search of more classic badaxx Bronson before finding this lost classic. Save your time and bucks by going straight to this excellent crime thriller.

See Bronson create the screen persona that would stay with him the rest of his long career. Bronson shines as the notorious and tough as nails Machine Gun Kelly. He plays a ruthless and mean spirited criminal with no love for anyone and a great fear of death. Great direction and pacing, great action and stylistic photography make for an enjoyable 80 minute diversion into the world of crime in early America. I'm not sure how accurate this was to the real life of Machine Gun, but Bronson brings to life his character in a way that grabbed the attention of a young Hollywood.

If you love the tough guy Bronson and are trying to add to your collection, skip most of his later films (Assasination, 10 to Midnight, Kinjite, Messenger...)and go straight for Machine Gun Kelly. I promise you'll get the mean mutha' Bronson that you're looking for!! Time to put this one on DVD....The Stone Killer and Telefon too for that matter

Let us get one thing straight. If you watch this movie to understand the story about the kidnapping of Oklahoma oil magnate Charlie Urchell in 1933 by George "Machine Gun" Kelly and his gang, you are going to be disappointed. The Urchell case made headlines across the nation that year because of the size of the ransom demand (over $100,000 - quite a sum in Depression America), and because in 1933 every kidnapping resurrected the hurt felt (at that time) that nobody had been arrested and made to pay for the kidnap murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr. in March 1932. The newly revamped F.B.I. under J. Edgar Hoover went after the kidnappers, and actually captured Kelly and his gang (and Urchell was not hurt). But aside for one moment at the tail end of this movie where an F.B.I. man summarizes Kelly correctly (he calls him "Pop Gun" for his lack of real courage) this film is totally wrong about the story - it basically jettisons it.

That isn't necessarily bad. Hoover and his men had a fairly simple time catching the inept Kelly. Here we are watching the rise and fall of a criminal legend, played well by Charles Bronson, and directed with some restraint by Roger Corman. We see that he is fixated on being a mean, violent man, who is trying to impress his girlfriend Flo (Susan Cabot). In reality Flo was able to manipulate George, and was whatever brains the organization actually had. But the role to watch in this film is that of Morey Amsterdam as Fandango. Amsterdam, a great one liner comic in the Henny Youngman tradition, is best recalled for his regular role as "Buddy Sorrell" in THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW in the 1960s, especially when confronting his bete noir Richard Deacon as producer "Mel Cooley". Here he plays a petty criminal who is injured on the way up by Kelly, and helps bring him down. Given acceptance of Corman's production value limits and the script's, Amsterdam's Fandango is a really vicious character, and a welcome surprise to people who just recall the marvelous comic performer. For him and Bronson's performance I'll give this a "7".