Law of the Underworld

... as "The Pay-Off" starring Lowell Sherman in which his usual insouciant persona was tempered by the dark purposes of crime and murder.

Two young people - Tommy and Annabelle - are planning to marry soon. So of course they flash their wad of cash - 136 dollars - to the point that a couple of hoods rob them at gunpoint. The hoods don't even bother to hide their faces, so Tommy recognizes one of the hoods and figures out where their hideout is. Their solution? Not to call the police, but to hold up the holdup men and their entire gang without hiding their faces. The gang leader, dapper Gene Fillmore (Chester Morris), captures the young couple before they can get away with the money. He then tells them that he can either call the police and get them arrested for armed robbery or they can agree to do some favor for him in the near future. The problem is that "favor" involves being a distraction during a jewelry store robbery in which a store salesman is killed. Now the two kids are technically as guilty of murder as the robbers themselves. Complications ensue.

Precode and even early sound films were often remade once sound technology got more advanced in the mid to late 30s, but they usually took advantage of those advancements to make a more sophisticated plot with a less claustrophobic and static setting. This film does neither of these things. And the film just shrieks "low budget". This is illustrated when the young couple is mixing it up on the dance floor in Fillmore's nightspot. They are shot from slightly below the waist up so you can't see that they cannot dance. The worst thing that this retread does is make the young couple as dense as the original couple was in the 1930 version. And dense does not automatically translate into likeable.

Young couple aside, the casting of the rest of the film was well done. Chester Morris was always a good choice when casting a gray yet sophisticated character. Lee Patrick is great as the sassy vengeful gun moll as opposed to the rather bland Helene Millard in the same role in the original. Then there is Eduardo Ciannelli as the hissing malevolent Rocky who wants to depose Fillmore as gang leader. Finally Walter Abel is a big improvement as the crusading prosecutor.

I'd recommend this one only for the very cinematically curious.

"Tommy" (Richard Bond) and girlfriend "Annabelle" (Anne Shirley) are a loved-up young couple dreaming of marriage who are robbed in the park of their life savings by a couple of opportunist mobsters. He recognises one of the thugs but instead of calling the cops, they try to deal with it themselves. That's their first big mistake and before long they are sweating it out in a police cell accused of complicity in a murder by the new D. A. "Rogers" (Walter Abel) who is bent on cleaning up the city. Meantime, city grandee "Fillmore" (Chester Morris) is playing a game of double-dealing as he also runs the gang that's at the centre of the youngster's problems. With them facing the chair, might he have a change of heart or are they toast? It's not a bad little effort all round, this film, though clearly the budget wasn't much. Eduardo Cianelli works well as the ruthless challenge to the more moderate "Fillmore" and Lee Patrick also delivers as the moll with a vicious streak a mile wide, but there's far too much dialogue and the denouement a bit too conveniently flat after not enough action. That said, Morris was always competent with these kind of roles and the ensemble do enough to pass an hour easily enough.

Law Of The Underworld contains some nice performances by Chester Morris, Lee Patrick, and Eduardo Ciannelli and sad that they are wasted in a muddle of a film. Quite frankly this thing is unbelievable.

Richard Bond and Anne Shirley are a pair of engaged folks who apparently have no street smarts and flash a roll around some gangsters. One of them Eduardo Ciannelli is a particularly murderous individual who hasn't been getting his financial due from the big boss Chester Morris. Still this big time heist guy robbing these kids for walking around money is really dumb.

But that's nothing to how dumb Shirley and Bond are who decide to stick up the stick up men and get their $136.00 nest egg back. Morris is in the room now and he overpowers them. But he decides he can use these two as a kind of shill for his next job which is jewelry store robbery.

It all of course both goes wrong and the film keeps going downhill from there. Lee Patrick is a nightclub singer and a really bad dame who's been two timing Morris with Ciannelli. Walter Abel repeats the role he had in Warner Brothers Racketbusters as a Thomas E. Dewey type special prosecutor.

The story is pretty unbelievable, why didn't those two young people just go to the cops and make a police report of the robbery? I guarantee you if you see Law Of The Underworld you won't figure it out either.

Again and again during the course of this film you might think that the movie might in fact turn out to be a reasonably good little film. However, due to really awful writing that occasionally creeps onto the screen, the overall effort is very, very poor, so don't get your hopes up with this little film.

The movie starts by showing a young couple being robbed in Central Park. It isn't surprising this happens--after all, they did a lousy job of concealing their wad of cash meant for their honeymoon. And, oddly, when a cop comes upon the robbery, the couple say nothing and don't ask for help--allowing the two crooks to continue robbing them and get away!! Even dumber is later, when the two burst into a room full of hoodlums and demand their money back at gunpoint!!! Believe it or not, this very, very naive couple only behave more stupidly throughout the course of the film.

While these two dummies seem too idiotic to believe, the rest of the actors in leading roles are pretty good---at least at first. Eduardo Cianelli is excellent as a hot-headed hood and Chester Morris is generally good as the leader of a gang. However, as the film concludes, Morris is so stupid that you wonder if hanging around this couple perhaps wore off on him--such as a stupid virus!! While parts of the film work, the bad parts are what I was left remembering. Even though I am a huge fan of classic Hollywood films, this is one I can't recommend and can never see myself seeing again. Avoid it--you'll be doing yourself a favor.

By the way, if you look carefully, you'll see that a member of the gang is a very young Jack Carson before he was a star.

"Law of the Underworld" is an interesting variation on the crime films so popular in the 1930s. The story isn't a bad one, although some of the far-fetched plot twists are curious, including some of the naive moves on the part of the young couple; but we must remember the girl (Anne Shirley) is only 18 and the boy (Richard Bond) presumably is only a tad older. Chester Morris carries the show, of course, with his usual strong and haughty persona, all the while also showing his sensitive side. The cast played their roles well. I really enjoyed the discussions and negotiations on the fate of the gang's leadership, which included Lee Patrick in a role that she probably enjoyed tackling. Eduardo Cianelli's Rocky was perfectly and darkly menacing. Effective black and white cinematography and the expansive nightclub sets enhanced the acting skills on display. Also appreciated were the many long takes. And finally, noteworthy too was the use of full-head and face screen shots late in the film, something not often seen in the 1930s. This movie admittedly is by no means great, but it can be entertaining and I would expect happily viewed by followers of old-school crime films.