60s Flashback: Roger Corman, Gangster

Before his classic 'The St. Valentine's Day Massacre,' Roger Corman made 'Machine Gun Kelly' and 'I, Mobster.'

Now Streaming: Roger Corman began making gangster movies in the 1950s at the request of American International Pictures (AIP).

Corman had produced The Cry Baby Killer (1958), which featured Jack Nicholson, then 22, in his first leading role. As Corman recounts in his autobiography, How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime (first published 1990), the film "made a little profit, once money from TV and foreign sales came in" prompting AIP to ask Corman to make another crime film. Corman "decided to take [the] story from the headlines  again, as I had done with Sputnik" in War of the Satellites.

After researching the life of the man known as Machine Gun Kelly, Corman hired screenwriter Bob Campbell (Five Guns West) and cast character actor Charles Bronson in his first leading role. Corman says: "We were telling a legitimate story with excellent actors," including co-star Susan Cabot. "The film got extremely favorable reviews in Europe, was shown at several festivals there, and became a hit in France." 

Machine Gun Kelly begins with a stunning, nearly-silent bank robbery that is carried out with deadly precision by the titular gangster and his gang. Kelly is definitely not like other gangsters in the 1930s. He acts quite tough, hits people, even kills people, but it's all out of a sense of cowardice and inner weakness. He's in control, but always on the verge of veering out of control. Directed with brash bravado by Corman, it's very impressive, especially in view of its tiny budget. [Tubi TV]

"All of this was quite timely," Corman says, "since I, too, was beginning to take my filmmaking more seriously. … But this was still low-budget stuff … art was not something I consciously aspired to create. My job was to be a good craftsman." 

Corman next made another gangster picture, I, Mobster, "for an independent producer who distributed through Twentieth Century-Fox." Steve Cochran starred in the story of a young criminal's rise through the ranks to become a mob boss, though Corman acknowledges "this was simply not the film Kelly was. It was far more conventional and it lacked Kelly's psychological subtlety and power." 

The opening sequence, featuring a Senate sub-committee holding a hearing and the mob boss repeatedly pleading the 5th Amendment, eerily foreshadows Corman's own cameo appearance in The Godfather, Part II (1974), as a U.S. Senator on a committee holding hearings about mob activity in the 1950s. That movie, of course, was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who Corman hired out of UCLA film school to be his assistant in the early 60s. 

Otherwise, the film is exactly as Corman describes it, "far more conventional" and lacking the previous films "psychological subtlety and power." It's currently available only in pan-and-scan versions that look pretty beat up; its opening credits claim that it was shot in Cinerama. I'd love to see that some day. On Pluto TV, there are eight commercial breaks, each including four advertisers, and I gave up after the second break. On Tubi TV, there were four commercial breaks, but it's much less intrusive, since each ad break is only for one or two advertisers. [Tubi TV]

From 1960 - 1064, Roger Corman primarily made horror films, mixed in with science fiction and war films, as well as the Grand Prix film The Young Racers and his first commercial failure, The Intruder, a social drama starring William Shatner. 

He also made his first picture for a major Hollywood studio, The Secret Invasion for United Artists. Corman was then approached by another major, Columbia Pictures, but grew restless with their method of doing things that he asked for a leave of absence and made the motorcycle picture The Wild Angels. His time at Columbia ended unhappily during production on The Long Ride Home, so he left and moved to Twentieth-Century Fox, which he got his biggest budget yet -- $1 million -- to make The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. 

Despite the studio blocking him from casting Orson Welles as Al Capone, Corman enjoyed the ready availability of sets available on the Fox studio lot, which helped him to make a picture that looked much bigger than his budget. Corman commented elsewhere that it was the studio's lowest budget movie that year. 

But it all looks fabulous on screen, especially on the Twilight Time Blu-ray, which looks very, very good when upscaled on a 4K home video system (player and television). Watching for a second time, I was floored by how good it looked, which made it easy to get swept up in the story, which is told in faux-documentary fashion, complete with the unmistakable stentorian voice of Paul Frees as narrator, filling in biographical details about each character, often speaking over what the character is saying. 

Released before the MPAA instituted a rating system, the film features no obscenities or nudity, but it is awash in repeated acts of violence, so would likely be rated PG today. Jason Robards, originally envisioned by Corman to play gangster Bugs Moran, instead plays Al Capone with a great deal of swagger and panache. 

Studio player George Segal, recent Academy Award nominee for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, plays a cruel gangster, with Ralph Meeker as Bugs Moran. Corman also cast actors he knew and worked with before, including Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, and Dick Miller.  

The Twilight Time Blu-ray is now out of print, unfortunately, but the film is available to rent or purchase via various Video On Demand platforms. [JustWatch] 

After the film, Roger Corman returned to making movies for American International Pictures, but his deal there would soon turn sour due to their interference with the editing on several pictures, including the gangster picture Bloody Mama, which was made in 1969 but not released until 1970. That is definitely not a family-friendly movie, even though it's all about a particularly bent criminal family, so it's outside the bounds of discussion here.