Machine-Gun Kelly (1958)

Lion’s Stare You Down.

Machine Gun Kelly is directed by Roger Corman and written by Robert Wright Campbell. It stars Charles Bronson, Susan Cabot, Morey Amsterdam, Jack Lambert, Frank DeKova and Connie Gilchrist. Music is by Gerald Fried and cinematography by Floyd Crosby.

George Francis Barnes Junior, AKA: Machine Gun Kelly, was a prohibition era American hoodlum, this movie is an interpretation of his time in the public enemy limelight.

Never climbing up to high energy rat-a-tat-tat action levels, Corman’s “mini” biopic none the less breezes along and remains fascinating throughout. The makers paint Kelly as something of a weak willed type of guy who is impotent without his Thompson Submachine Gun. This is a man firmly dangling on the end of the puppet strings being twirled and pulled by his Moll, Flo Becker. Oh he’s not beyond slapping his woman around, or bullying one of his weaker willed accomplices, but Corman and Campbell assure us that Kelly is not to be gloried, even giving him a pathological fear of dying that shows him in this movie form as something of a coward.

Of course this is just a movie, and for historical facts and figures et al, folks are warned this is not a biography to use as a starting point to explore Kelly’s reputation…

Bronson as Kelly is wonderfully broody and he handles the fluctuations in Kelly’s psyche with convincing skill. Cabot as Flo is a sex-bomb, and deviously appealing with it she is as well, while Amsterdam gets to play a character so colourful and kinked, it wouldn’t be out of place in classic era film noir. Crosby was an ace cinematographer, capable of making the cheapest crime movie production looking a whole lot more expensive, such is the case here. While Fried provides a progressive jazz musical score that ranges from Ant Hill Mob like breeziness to funky piano based frenzies.

All in all, a good gangster movie that benefits from some well written and performed characterisations. 7/10