Customer Reviews

Devil's Party

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For some reason that tough corner of New York City, Hell's Kitchen, had a good run in the 1930s. THE DEVIL'S PARTY is one of many slum kids movies of that decade, one of the better ones of a genre that would camp out into Dead End Kids silliness within a decade.

The story comes from Borden Chase's novel "Hell's Kitchen Has a Pantry." The movie opens with a gang of five slum kids, four boys and a girl, casing and preparing to steal from a fruit company. They throw a diversionary smudge pot into the warehouse and accidentally start a fire. The leader, Marty Malone, is caught and, following the rules of the street, takes the rap and refuses to squeal on his cohorts. Malone is sent to reform school while the other kids apparently take the scare to heart and reform themselves.

Flash forward to adulthood and the kids have grown up into a nightclub singer, a priest, a nightclub owner who has a couple of toes in the "racket," and a brace of cops.

Not surprisingly Malone is the one who grew up a touch shady, although the group remain great good friends and reune annually. Things turn sour and into a movie when Malone has a couple of goons put the squeeze on a gambling playboy who's bouncing big checks on him and laughing about it. Squeeze turns into murder (against Malone's orders, I hasten to add) and a few too many clues are left to make it seem an accident. Two emergency squad policemen called to the scene just happen to be the O'Mara brothers, two-fifths of the old fruit nabbing slum kids' gang.

Gentle brute Victor McLaglen, who had two years earlier won a leading actor Academy Award in John Ford's 1936 THE ENFORCER, stars as the grown up Marty Malone. The rest of the cast is made up of talented and vaguely familiar bit actors. For instance, singer Beatrice Roberts is probably best known for her role as Azura, Queen of Mars, in the Flash Gordon serials. William Gargan, one of the two O'Mara brothers, was nominated for an Oscar in 1941 for his supporting role in THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED. McLaglen had enough range to carry any b-movie they cared to throw at him, but the other actors in this are top of the line b-stars who didn't embarrass themselves when they appeared in more prestigious films.

After the delinquent gambler's murder things heat up considerably, old ties of friendship are frayed and stressed, and Malone eventually finds himself in the position of having to take another one to protect the gang. What happens is fairly predictable, but this film is fast paced and avoids so many cliches it's hard not to like it.

The print transfer on this discount dvd is fairly good, all things considered. The image is usually clear and sharp and the sound is acceptable. There are a few stretches where the film is badly scratched and stained, but fewer than some from this distributor.

A bit of trivia. Victor McLaglen didn't come into his own as an actor until he was over fifty. Prior to his acting career he was a boxer (check his more-than-once broken nose for verification) and my old copy of The Film Encyclopedia says that he once fought heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, who he lost to in six rounds.

1938's The Devil's Party is really one heck of a good movie packing a solid story and quite an emotional punch. I've never been all that wild about Hell's Kitchen movies, but this one is different. We start out in that infamous section of old New York, but the real story involves an unfortunate series of events that tests the bonds of friendship and accentuates the fuzzy line that sometimes exists between the good and bad in men.

The Death Avenue Cowboys, four boys and a girl (accepted quite reluctantly, of course), grew up during some hard times in Hell's Kitchen and remained friends even as they grew up and went their separate ways. That special bond of friendship was really cemented by the gang's leader, Marty Malone, when he refused to squeal on his friends and took the rap for a warehouse fire he accidentally started (it was supposed to be nothing more than a smoky diversion). Marty did his time in the reformatory, and he's now a successful night club owner - although the gambling part of his establishment casts something of a shadow over his life. The little girl who pestered her way into the club is now a singer, the O'Mara brothers are policemen, and the other Death Avenue Cowboy is now a priest. The gang gets together every year to reminisce, and this year it's Marty's turn to host. The party's a success, but misfortune strikes soon thereafter.

A couple of Marty's boys came down a little hard on a fellow who refused to pay his gambling debt. Joe O'Hara thinks the "accident" was actually a murder, and he's determined to snoop around - which, naturally, is the last thing Marty (Victor McLaglen) wants. You can imagine how things snowball from here. (You don't really want one of your best friends linking you to a murder, even when you're only indirectly responsible for it.) Eventually, all five former friends are sucked deeply into an increasingly dangerous situation, their loyal bonds of friendship more than strained in the process. The whole series of unfortunate events that takes place puts Marty in a particularly impossible situation, as he is both innocent and guilty at the same time. Still, he remains the most sympathetic character throughout the film; his hands are a little dirty, but he's basically a good and charitable man who just can't seem to avoid trouble.

The Devil's Party tells a most compelling, thought-provoking story. It's presented in a rather straightforward matter, and in some ways it is predictable, yet the moral issues that form the heart of the drama really carry this film to great heights. Some of the movie summaries I've read make it sound as if somebody starts killing off these old friends one at a time in grisly fashion, but that is not the case at all. This isn't horror or a hard-boiled crime thriller; it's barely even a mystery. It is instead a poignant emotional drama with far more depth than you might expect. I was really impressed with The Devil's Party, despite its far too sensational title.

The Devil's Party, 1938 film

The film shows a street sign: 35th Street and "Hell's Kitchen" (midtown West Side). In the past children played on the grim street called "Death Avenue" (Tenth Avenue?). A young girl slides down a coal chute to get into a basement. Helen McCoy wants to join the boy's gang. This gang plans to steal fresh fruit from a warehouse. A fire breaks out! Marty is blamed and sent to the reformatory (Prep School for criminals?). Years later Marty Malone owns a nightclub. Helen McCoy is a singer there. One customer refuses to pay his gambling losses. "Sue me." "That's not how I operate." The Emergency Squad gets a call, a sign fell and killed Kent Brewster. That old gang gets together for their annual meeting.

We learn what happened to Brewster. When Joe O'Mara goes to investigate he finds the two villains there. The fight prevents Joe from talking. But brother Mike O'Mara knows it was suspicious. "The case is closed." Marty questions his henchmen. Later there is an explosion at the "Cigarette Club". Was it an inside job? Marty tells Diamond to get out of town. Mike becomes suspicious of Marty. Jerry stops him. A policeman arrives to arrest Mike. Marty confesses to Jerry about the incident. Mike accuses Marty in the press! Helen talks to Marty about the death of Joe. The villains plan to bump off Marty and anyone else who can endanger them. We see their plan. Can something go wrong? The Emergency Squad is called to warn them of the planned robbery. Will the arrival of Mike foil this plan? Will there be a playground for the children of Hell's Kitchen?

This is an average drama that looks at the lives of people in a section of a big city. None of them are the average working people found in any city. This is like a restrained, moderated version of "The Public Enemy", probably due to the Production Code which censored films.