The Miracle Kid

"The Miracle Kid" stars Tom Neal as Jimmy, a prize fighter who is planning on giving up the business, as his fiancée hates boxing and doesn't want to see him get his brain beaten to mush in the ring. However, after he beats one opponent and the loser blames Jimmy for 'hexing him', Jimmy's promoter decides to play up this angle by arranging a series of rigged fights. Jimmy is termed 'the Miracle Kid' and goes on to win fight after fight--but in the process he ends up losing his girl. Worst of all, Jimmy actually thinks he's really good and has no idea that his opponents are taking dives. Can all this be sorted out by the end of the film? What do you think?

The film has decent acting--a bit better than you'd expect from a B. However, the boxing scenes are a bit limp and Neal isn't able to pull of his being a fighter. This is actually surprising, as in real life, Neal was a real violent sort of guy and this led to his being blackballed by the studios--especially after he reportedly beat the tar out of Franchot Tone. Overall, the film has very few surprises (other than the psychic angle) and is mildly enjoyable but nothing more.

Ben Taggart and Betty Blythe are ex-spouses who run competing physical culture empires. Carol Hughes is Taggart's secretary, whose fiance, Tom Neal, is a flub boxer. Alex Callam runs publicity for both organizations, which neither knows. Through the usual unlikely series of events, Neal scores an unlikely knockout. The other boxer claims he has an evil eye, which causes Neal's shady manager to tout him as unstoppable.

I started looking at this movie not expecting much. The director was William Beaudine. Given a decent budget, he could turn out a fine picture, but this was a PRC production, and that meant the money would not be enough for an AIP production in the 1960s.

It wasn't a great movie, by any means, but everyone knew their lines, hit their marks and did their best. Given the mediocre script, it has aged very poorly, but it provided a few chuckles along the way.