Young Dillinger

This is a great gritty low budget movie from a fabled small boutique studio Allied Artists which had a great run with films such as Love In The Afternoon, Friendly Persuasion, El Cid, Papillion and Cabaret, et al and film directors such as William Wyler, John Huston, Billy Wilder and stars such as Ava Gardner, Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, Steve McQueen, Sophia Loren. Young Dillinger is a wonderful movie directed by Robert Wilson who also did a fine racetrack drama at Warner Bros called Wall of Noise that starred Ty Hardin, Dorothy Provine, Ralph Meeker and Suzy Pleshette. Robert Wilson cast his movies well! In Young Dillinger, Nick Adams and Bob Conrad star along with former Ms America Mary Ann Mobley and a great cameo by Victor Buono. There isn't much more to say about this fine film but to see it if and when you can!

This repetitive 60s TV musical score tries to drown out the absurdly delivered dialog but doesn't succeed. The OVERACTING is just too much for mere loudly redundant riffs to overcome. Lines like "we're trapped". "Tell me about it". And "quit Johnny, I don't want my baby to lose her father" are offered with either no passion at all or shouted with such ridiculous intensity that you must laugh. The shoot outs are brutally executed with incredibly stupid victims waiting to be "gunned down" by the vicious most at all misunderstood young men who seem to kill without conscious or motive. Johnny Yuma was supposed to be a rebel..,Johnny Dillinger had no motivation...unless he just wanted to get away from That incredibly noisy music in his head.

I always enjoy the old crime films especially when they are filmed in black and white. Frankly though, Young Dillinger was a big disappointment. I could not understand the relationship on screen between John Dillinger (Nick Adams), and his moll. Elaine (Mary Ann Mobley). They continually expressed their undying love to one another but all I saw were two people reading their scripted lines and lacking any emotion or physical attraction to one another. If anything I viewed Mary Ann Mobley's performance as deserving of a. Golden Raspberry Award. Had this award been available in 1965. Fortunately for Mary Ann Mobley the awards were first presented in 1981.

There is a relatively strong supporting cast with actors such as Robert Conrad, John Ashley, Victor Buono, and John Hoyt but their performances were wasted on this very choppy film with no real sense of direction.

No spoilers here but suffice to say I am still waiting for a proper ending to the film. It is as if the director was left hanging when the entire cast walked out before the film was provided with a proper ending to the Young Dillinger story.

I can only give this film a lacklustre 3 out of 10 IMDb rating.

What a load of bs, from the acting to costumes and facts or lack there of. Nick adams as dillinger is as bad as mickey rooney as babyface Nelson. I loved Robert Conrad in almost everything but this, a waste of talent. Nick adams like rooney a angry little guy. The only thing that I like about this is the music.

The poor man's James Dean during the 1950s, Nick Adams always felt that he'd been born at the wrong time. He wanted to be a James Cagney type tough guy in Depression-era gangster films. He finally had the chance to make that dream come true, if on an ultra-cheap budget, with this wildly inaccurate tale of John Dillinger and his bank robbing gang. At one point, Adams even does a Cagney imitation, the hilarious high point of what is, sad to say, a rather inept film, if an intriguing one all the same. Mary Anne Mobley plays his gun moll with gusto, and best pal Pretty Boy Floyd is portrayed by Adams' own best friend, Robert Conrad. Various semi-stars, from Victor Buono to John Hoyt, show up in cameos. I love the scene in which a plastic surgeon (Hoyt) tries to change "Johnny's" face, but it remains the same - and so, going Richard Widmark one better from Kiss of Death, Dillinger cackles with laughter as he tosses the chairbound doctor into a pool and watches him drown. Adams co-produced, and the film's failure left him distraught - and somewhat destitute. When the film was shown on CBS TV three years later, Adams even lost his top-billing, as Conrad (who had become a star thanks to The Wild, Wild West on that network) was given that honor for the telecast. A day after the broadcast, Adams was found dead in his apartment, an apparent suicide. Come on, Nick - it wasn't THAT bad!