LeonLouisRicci Made for a Couple Hundred Thousand this Movie Grossed Four Million Dollars for the Low-Rent Monogram Studios. The Philip Yordan Screenplay was Nominated for an Oscar, Unheard of for a Poverty Row Studio. The Movie made Real-Life Tough Guy Lawrence Tierney an On Screen Tough Guy Star.This B-Movie has Gained Exceptional Stature over the Years and is a Gangster-Noir of the First Order. The Film is Noted for its Violence and there is Plenty of it, but the Results of the Carnage are Always Off Screen. It is Still Riveting in its Implications like a Broken Beer Mug to the Face and the Gunning Down of an Elderly Couple In Cold Blood.The Scene where Dillinger is asked to Smile is Classic and there are Others that are Memorable, like the Creepy Sunglasses and Santa Claus as the Mood of the Movie goes from Action to Tragedy. These are just a Few of the Film's Memorable Moments.Forget the Historicity and Dillinger as Folk Hero, because All of that is Abandon for Code Friendly Bad Guys are Bad Guys Necessity.Note...A Film of the same name was released in 1974 Directed by John Milius and is an overlooked, underrated Working.

bkoganbing It's too bad that the first film tribute to the baddest bandit of the last century was done by Poverty Row Monogram Pictures. And while Lawrence Tierney is certainly brutal enough to portray that aspect of John Dillinger's personality, the charm that was also part of Dillinger was left out. It's possible a good deal was left on the cutting room floor of Monogram.Both Johnny Depp's Public Enemies and even more so the film Dillinger that starred Warren Oates in the title role were far closer to the truth than this was. To be sure Dillinger's legendary escape from an Indiana jail with a fake wooden gun and the matter of his demise were included if not completely accurately. You couldn't have a film about Dillinger without them.No deep psychological insights into John Dillinger here. He was just a mean anti-social individual who took to a life of crime. In most other times he would have not been glamorized. But this was The Great Depression and bankers were not popular back in those days. They were foreclosing left and right and when they weren't doing that they were failing, robbing people of life savings. So if Dillinger and his kind were taking out withdrawals their way, who really cared?Dillinger while in prison for a two bit convenience store stickup meets up with old time bank robber Edmund Lowe and the rest of the gang which consists of Eduardo Ciannelli, Elisha Cook, and Marc Lawrence. Tierney as Dillinger bust them out of the joint after he's finished his sentence and takes over the mob from Lowe. He also meets up with Anne Jeffreys who becomes the infamous lady in red.Certainly Depp and Oates got more out of the Dillinger role than Tierney did. But what Tierney got was a career and in a limited way he did capture part of the Dillinger mystique. Sad this film was not done at a major studio though.

winner55 By no means true t the actual story of famed bank-robber John Dillinger, but may be true to the personality of the man. Tierney plays Dillinger unromantically as an unredeemable sociopath completely obsessed with getting money on his own terms. His depiction of Dillinger's transformation from punk wannabe to actual cold-hearted thug is completely believable. The supporting cast is all tops, especially Lowe and Elisha Cook Jr. in his best bad-guy performance. The cheap sets, integration of stock-footage, location shooting are all surprisingly effective - only some of the back-screen effects are weak. The script is demandingly tight but both the cast and the director are up for it - despite the fact that the story spreads across some 15 years, it moves right along, intent only on depiction of the high-points of its theme. It's an intentional throw-back to the Warner Bros. gangster films of the early thirties, which makes it top-of-the-line of a wave of crime B-mellers in the late '40s (also dominated by Warner Bros., which studio apparently insisted on this film losing the Academy Award for Best Screenplay, and which, with further irony, now owns its rights). And its hard to imagine a film that makes so much use of violence without any graphic depiction of it.A true gem of American B-movie history.

Ham_and_Egger *** Slight spoiler in fourth paragraph. *** A poverty-row gangster flick that, for much of its 70 minutes, rivals the best Warner Bros. had to offer. The movie plays fast and loose with history, mixing fact and fiction at will, but almost to be expected when dealing with Dillinger and at least this film doesn't masquerade as a documentary like so much of the infotainment on TV these days.Blessed with matinée idol's looks and an ex-con's temperament Lawrence Tierney was the perfect actor to play Dillinger. I'd seen a couple of his other, lesser, films before checking this one out and I honestly didn't think much of him as an actor. He has screen presence and shoots a furious glance like nobody's business, but beyond that he'd always seemed limited to me. In Dillinger he proved me wrong, obviously his swagger was just right for the character, but he really does give a superb performance. At times he brings to mind James Cagney as Cody Jarrett in White Heat (which wouldn't be made until 1949).The rest of the cast is good as well, it's tempting to call the familiar Elisha Cook, Jr. the stand-out but really the members of the gang all fill their roles admirably. Anne Jeffreys plays Dillinger's fictional moll Helen Rogers, unfortunately her character is really just a sketch. If this had been an "A picture" she surely would have gotten more screen-time.*** Spoiler? *** Is it really a spoiler to say that John Dillinger was shot to death by FBI agents in an alley behind Chicago's Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934? I found the end quite disappointing, it builds to a false climax and then maunders for about ten minutes before unceremoniously disposing of the "hero" at the correct time and place. Of course just about everyone knows it's coming, but in my opinion the editor could have added a little more tension. I suppose in '45 they were still worried about glamourizing Dillinger, but these qualms didn't seem to slow them throughout the rest of the picture.All in all, a tremendous B-movie that hints at what Lawrence Tierney could have been if his many mis-steps hadn't gotten in the way.