Gang Bullets

After watching this recently, it really dawned on me the big gap between crime stories on film of the 1930s to ones made from 1940 on. The '30s look and sound so more dated than ones just a half dozen years later. Part of that is good because the 1930s expressions are fun to hear and the films are shorter and faster-paced, and a bit edgier.

The cops that appear are really different. Even though there is a lot of moralizing - which is fine with me, such as prefaces right before the feature warning of the dangers of crimes and having criminals glorified, the films themselves actually make the cops look like thugs as well as the criminals!

The police are shown treating suspects as if they are already convicted felons, roughing them up, denying them a lawyer, detaining them illegally, etc. - and they are supposed to be the good guys?! I am no Liberal by a longshot but no wonder laws were put in to protect average citizens from the police, if that's the way things were. In fact, I was shocked to hear the term "police brutality" in this movie. I always thought that expression came from the 1960s, but here it is in a 1938 film. However, in an interesting twist, in this film two crooks fake "police brutality" to get out of testifying before a grand jury against their vicious gangland boss. Interesting things happen after that, and this film gets better and better as it goes on. The main crook, played by Morgan Wallace, is really fascinating in his brutal attitude. At least they still made the bad guys worse people than those 'brutal' cops.

These '30 gangster movies. may be hokey, corny, extremely dated and inadvertently not favorable to the police here and there, but they don't mess around by being too talky. They get to the point and they are simply fun to watch.

Note: The IMDb board here hasn't listed this as available on DVD but that's how I watched it yesterday. It's part of a 4-film DVD pack entitled "Mobster Movies."

Noble district attorney Charles Trowbridge (as Dexter Wayne) and young assistant Robert Kent (as John Carter) are put to task when racketeer Morgan Wallace (as "Big Bill" Anderson) moves his base of criminal operations to their law-abiding Bridgetown. With sharp lawyers and knowledge about his rights, Mr. Wallace proves to be a tough mobster to convict, and the town becomes riddled with scandal. Pretty Anne Nagel (as Patricia "Pat" Wayne), the fiancée of Mr. Kent and daughter of Mr. Trowbridge, is startled when Wallace's corruption gets too close for comfort...

This is a cheap, slow-moving crime drama from the "Monogram" company. The first interesting scene involves some rough interrogations - watch cameras keep rolling as Donald Kerr (as Joe Armstrong) gets his hat tossed onto the floor by a policeman. No retakes there. The highlight may be seeing young Bennie Bartlett (as Billy Jones), future "Bowery Boys" member, play a twelve-year-old who gets hit harder than most films of the era might allow. Top-billed Ms. Nagel isn't given very much to do. Trowbridge does what he can with the story's most interesting role.

**** Gang Bullets (11/10/38) Lambert Hillyer ~ Robert Kent, Anne Nagel, Charles Trowbridge, Morgan Wallace

B-movie regular Charles Trowbridge is the District Attorney "Wayne" who is constantly playing a cat and mouse game with savvy crook "Big Bill" (Morgan Wallace). Thanks to the latter man's army of lawyers and henchmen, "Wayne" usually comes off empty-handed until he alights on a cunning plan to use his deputy "Carter" (Robert Kent) who is engaged to his daughter "Patricia" (Anna Nagel) to set up the mother of all sting operations that might just expose their quarry to charges even he can't argue away. The production and the acting are both a bit basic and there's way too much dialogue as the scenarios stray into the faintly ridiculous, but the last ten minutes are quite enjoyably strung together using an old grenade and loads of brass neck. Standard fayre you'll never remember, but it passes an hour ok.

GANG BULLETS is a low rent mobster story from cheapie studio Monogram Pictures, notorious for making endless B-movies on a shoestring. This film's about the efforts of an entire city's law and justice departments to bring a notorious criminal to book. Morgan Wallace plays said criminal, 'Big Bill' Anderson, with relish and certainly dominates the film with his larger-than-life persona. I loved the sly joke when he tells the cops that his tax records are up to date so they can't bring him to book.

With a running time clocking in at just over an hour, GANG BULLETS is never boring for a moment and the plot constantly twists and turns as first the cops and then the criminals get the upper hand. The usual clichés of the gangster genre are played out here, including protection rackets, stings, and shoot-outs, and they're all handled with surprising aplomb given the paucity of the budget. The film lacks any big-name actors for recognition but works anyway despite this.

***SPOLIERS*** One of many Monogram Pictures contribution to fighting crime in the thirties, before the company went into horror films. "Gang Bullets" has to do with how the law is tilted on the side of the criminals and how a crusading and clever D.A turned the tables of a group of ruthless mobsters by almost becoming a member of their gang.

Having been run out of a number of towns big time gangster Big Bill Anderson, Morgan Wallace, finally settles in this unnamed city where he quickly and secretly sets up his organization. Bill Bill's syndicate terrorized everyone from the local cleaners and grocery store owners to the mayor himself.

Big Bill Anderson had learned over the years to stay out of the limelight by letting others, in his criminal organization, do the walking and talking as well as dirty work for him. Smart enough to hire himself a top criminal lawyer Meade, John T. Murrary, Big Bill is even immune, something that even the infamous Al Capone wasn't, from the feds by carefully paying his income tax and keeping records of all his receipts from the tax department to keep it off his back.

Making a shambles of the city's law enforcement agencies it begins to look like Big Bill would never be stopped from doing his dirty dealing as organized crime engulfs the entire metropolis. Big Bill's crimes syndicate uses shake downs, or protection rackets, and has bordellos and illegal gambling dens sprouting up all over the city with the law, unable to pin Big Bill & Co down with an indictment, helpless to stop or run them out of business.

City D.A Dexter Wayne,Charles Trowbidge, frustrated with his inability to get anything on Big Bill devises a secret plan to get the arrogant hood with his pants down by plying into his hubris and sense of invincibility. The plan would expose D.A Wayne to criminal prosecution himself and even death at the hands of Big Bill's gang if they ever should find out that he's setting them up.

Having a secret meeting with Big Bill D.A Wayne agrees to take a $10,000.00 bribe from him to lay off his boys and with everyone expecting Wayne to be thrown out of office in the coming elections he's assured by Big Bill that he'll have a place in his organization as one of his high paid legal mouthpieces.Unknown to Big Bill is that D.A Wayne's assistant and future son-in-law John Carter, Robert Kent, had secretly recorded his conversation with the D.A not knowing that his boss, the D.A Wayne, is throwing in his lot with the Big Bill Gang. Hurt and distraught D.A Wayne's daughter Pat, Ann Nagel, after listening to the secret Dictaphones recording of Big Bill and her dad breaks the record in half destroying it so the facts on it wouldn't be made public. Unknown to her an unknown news source, code named Julius, reported the entire story to the newspapers leaving John Carter no choice to indite both Big Bill and his boss and future father-in-law D.A Wayne for extortion and bribery.

It's only after when D.A Wayne and Big Bill break out of police custody that the truth comes out to D.A Wayne's true motives. As the police and assistant D.A Carter race against the clock to not only capture Big Bill before he takes off, on a private plane, to South America as well as double-crosses his partner in crime the disgraced D.A Dexter Wayne by blowing him to pieces in his hide out leaving nothing of the D.A left to be buried.

Predictable ending with Carter and the cops getting to the hideout just in time. With Big Bill not only getting arrested together with his gang of hoodlums but, with the help of the undercover D.A Wayne, being caught with the goods on them making the law, for once in the movie, work on the side of those who observe it not break it. And yes it was non-other then D.A Dexter Wayne himself, using the news reporter pseudonym Julius, who leaked the story about himself taking a bribe from Big Bill. This was to get on his good side and make the big guy think that he's got the goods on him. When in truth it was Dexter Wayne that got Big Bill to let his guard down and thus set him up for the big fall at the end of the movie.