A Bank Robbing Double Feature, part 1

 

Machine Gun Kelly and The Bonnie Parker Story were released as a double-feature in 1958. Both were released by American International Pictures and produced on very low budgets (which was A.I.P.'s specialty.) Both, despite the low budget, are excellent movies.

Machine Gun Kelly was produced and directed by Roger Corman, who is often remembered for churning out scores of movies on very low budgets, thus turning a profit on each one regardless of its quality. But he was a good director when he put his mind to it. He knew how to tell a story well and his direction often has a visual flair to it that keeps things interesting.

Kelly is one of his good films. It benefits from having Charles Bronson play the title role. This was Bronson's first leading role and he does a great job endowing that role with just the right mixture of brutality, bravado and barely-hidden cowardice.

Kelly runs a small gang that specializes in bank robberies. His girl--Flo Becker--is a part of that gang (with Susan Cabot giving another strong performance). It's soon obvious that she is the manipulative half of the two, though Kelly maintains an veneer of supposed manhood around her with occasional abusive behavior and displays of jealousy. 

All in all, it's not a healthy relationship. But then, Kelly has trouble with healthy relationships. His leadership methodology to run the gang boils down to being a bully. It's not a happy gang.

In fact, that gang splits apart and turns against one another when a bank job goes wrong. Even before that, one of them tries to snitch more than his cut from the bank job that opens the movie. That guy ends up being pushed onto a cage containing an angry mountain lion and losing an arm. Kelly later has to ambush a rival gang led by one of his former partners. 

It's Kelly's brutality that eventually brings him down. He and Flo turn to kidnapping, teaming up with a crook named "Apple" and snatching the young daughter of a rich man. But Kelly eventually kills Apple and the one-armed snitch from earlier in the movie snitches once again. Things begin to fall apart, with Kelly now in a panic as the Feds close in, while Flo tries to badger him into manning up and going down in a blaze of gunfire.

There are hints throughout the movie that Kelly is a coward, egged on to acts of immoral courage only because of Flo. Anything he sees that reminds him of death sends him into a cold sweat. In fact, the second bank robbery goes wrong because he sees a coffin being delivered and freezes up for a minute, keeping him from getting to the bank in time to cover his partners.

The movie has a number of strong elements aside from the solid story and the lead actors. The supporting cast are all great, each giving their characters distinctive personalities. Especially notable are Frank DeKova as a crooked gas station owner who claims to have once been a great hunter and Morey Amsterdam as the eventually one-armed snitch with a snake-oil personality. In fact, it's fun to see Amsterdam (best remembered as Buddy on The Dick Van Dyke Show) play a low-life crook. 

I couldn't decide on which scene to highlight for this review, so I'm just going with both my top choices. The first is the dialogue-free opening scene, showing up a bank robbery set to jazz music. The other gives us a chance to see Charles Bronson roughing up Morey Amersterdam--which is something you just don't see every day.

Next week, we'll look at The Bonnie Parker Story--the other half of this drive-in double feature from 1958.