Guns Don't Argue

So how did this teenage drive-in freak miss a title like this back in '57. Just lucky, I guess. However you look at the 90-minutes, the result is a mess. It's a composite made up of episodes from a 1952 TV series "Gangbusters", while the editing shows more fascination with tommy-guns than anything else. It doesn't matter who the real life desperado is- Dillinger, Karpis, Pretty Boy Floyd- it's the tommy guns that do the talking. Then too, I love the way the Hollywood splatter seldom hits its mark. That way, we get extended bursts. Since there's no plot, just a collection of shoot-outs, don't expect a story. One notable exception is Jean Harvey as the formidable Ma Barker. Her fiery demeanor is scarier than any of the male desperadoes. Looks like her talents could fit into an A-production in an otherwise brief career.

True to its "Dragnet" time period, the aim (if you can call it that) is to laud law enforcement ( here, the FBI) as they gun down a succession of Public Enemy #1's. Also true to the period, the gang molls sport twin peaks and tight skirts- so guys, there are two paramount compensations. Nonetheless, it's a movie unlike any I've seen, or ever want to see.

The history of early-twentieth-century organized crime, and the response of law enforcement, narrated on the budget of a high-school sex-ed movie. Martin Scorsese recommended this movie as the ultimate exemplar of visual storytelling on a well-worn shoestring, and he knows whereof he speaks: even Sam Fuller never had to portray a shooting death by dissolving to stock footage of a firing gun.

This feature-length movie has been edited from episodes of the 1952 TV series, Gangbusters. The style is government informative shorts presented by police agents and promoting their exploits. It dramatizes various gang crews and their ultimate downfalls. Some of the famous names include Pretty-Boy Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, and Ma Barker.

In a way, this is an interesting look into early television. As a movie, it is little vignettes that don't gel together. Sure, I remember the shootout with the Barkers. Maybe the final Bonnie and Clyde shootout helps informed the later movie. Far more often, this is a weak production of disjointed scenes and I don't know the vast majority of these actors. The constant changing of the characters do not help.

Apparently re-cut episodes from the Gangbusters TV show on the big screen. While this was frequently done in the 50's and 60's because people didn't have a TV or a color TV and producers wanted an increased return on their investment (big screen ticket sales or if it went to the small screen resale of a series that isn't in syndication), the results were usually less then the sum of their parts. The only time I've ever seen it work were where multi-part stories were put together (Ala Rocky Jones or Man From Uncle) or in the case of horror anthology (The Veil and 13 Demon Street). Here the effect is to have stories of American criminals in the 20's and 30's (Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, etc)inter-cut with each other as a narrator talks about how the FBI hunted them down. Its a weird concoction that doesn't quite work because its clear that there are things here that don't belong together. More than once I looked at the TV oddly because things didn't seem right. In fairness I won't describe the cheapness of the production since this was what early TV (and the series) was like. Its not bad, but its not very good either. To be perfectly honest the episodes of the series that I've seen work better a single episodes where we're not expecting as much. Given the choice I'd rent dvds of the show instead of this movie.

`Guns Don't Argue' is essentially a docu-drama about the war against crime in the 20's and 30's, with particular emphasis on the role of the FBI in that process. It is very much pro-Hoover, pro-law-enforcement, and anti-criminal, and is also quite heavy-handed (often laughably so) in its narration and its portrayals of the criminal element. While offering an interesting counter-point to such romanticisations of the outlaw as Arthur Penn's `Bonnie and Clyde', this movie simply goes TOO far in the opposite direction, to the detriment of what real history it presents.

The worst revisionist moments are in the portrayals of the executions of John Dillinger and of Bonnie and Clyde (interestingly, consistently called `Clyde and Bonnie' in this picture). In reality, each was gunned down maliciously by lawmen who gave no warnings, having set up fool-proof ambushes and using patsies to bait their prey. The vigillantism of law enforcement officials in these days is a legacy America still must live down. In `Guns Don't Argue,' however, Bonnie, Clyde and Dillinger are somehow able to get off the first shots, and the implication is presented that they were given ample opportunity to surrender. Also notably lacking is any sense of the popularity of bank robbers among the American masses, especially after the stock market crash. Dillinger, particularly, was regarded with considerable reverence in the 30's, not the abject fear that this film suggests.

In another interesting twist on history (although a more informed criminal historian will have to bring out the true story), Lyle Talbot takes on a role out of Ed Wood's `Jail Bait' (1954) and is forced to perform plastic surgery on gangster Al Karpis at gunpoint. Those who have seen Ed's original will agree - his `surprise ending' was more effective than this rip-off's.

The best sequence of this movie, however, is that of the vicious `Ma' Barker' and her brood. The little old lady with a Tommy-gun is somehow the most powerful image of the film. The film is quick to point out that the only reason Barker's family attended church was because it helped them avoid jail sentences, of course. Ma' does spend a good deal of screen time in the kitchen, however, reminding us that 50's values cross race, class and even legal lines.