Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Pretty" good...for a B Movie, December 10, 2005
Sony Pictures has done a marvelous job bringing back these long forgotten crime classics,many of which fall into the "film noir" catagory.Among this collection is "Pretty Boy Floyd" which is a dramatization of the real life 1930's era bandit.
Amazingly,the film is pretty close to telling his real life story despite some obvious dramatic liberties.In the film,John Erickson plays Charles Arthur Floyd....the Oklahoma farm boy who will eventually become America's most wanted gangster.Erickson not only bares a strong resemblence to the real Floyd,he also give a pretty good performance,despite the "tough guy" trappings that go with playing characters of this nature.The film is also filled with the usual array of floozie gun molls,tough guy gansters,yellow rats,cartoonish hayseed rednecks,and hard nose coppers....Y'know...the usual characters you'd find in a gangster film.Despite it's own cheesiness,it is a good shoot 'em up gangster film.Another bonus to this film is seeing Peter "Columbo" Falk as one of Pretty Boy's early partners and Al "Grandpa Munster" Lewis as a cowardly killer who lures Floyd into a mob hit gone bad.My only hang up is the fact that the music score comprises 50's era jazz and rockabilly music (Even though the film encompasses the 1929-1934 era).
All in all,it's an enjoyable movie.It's certainly better than "Dillinger" with Lawrence Tierney.So if you like those old "late night black and white movies on Channel 13"....then you'll like this movie.
|
|
|
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Meet Charles Arthur 'Pretty Boy Floyd', present vocation oilfield worker, future vocation...public enemy number one!, January 27, 2006
From Sony's Gangsters, Guns & Floozies Crime Collection set comes the film Pretty Boy Floyd (1960)...I have to say, having watched three of the five films included within the set, I'm pretty disappointed so far with the lack of attention Sony's Wonder division has given the material transferred onto DVD, resulting in mediocre to poor releases...anyway, written an directed by Herbert J. Leder (Fiend Without a Face, The Frozen Dead), the film stars the handsome and lanky television regular John Ericson (Bad Day at Black Rock, The Return of Jack Slade). Also appearing is Joan Harvey (Hands of a Stranger), Barry Newman (Vanishing Point), Norman Burton (Diamonds Are Forever, The Terminal Man), Philip Kenneally (Little Big Man), Peter Falk ("Columbo", Murder by Death), in an early film role, and Al `Grandpa' Lewis ("The Munsters", The Boatniks), in a very small, but memorable part.
The story here relates the tale of Charles Arthur `Pretty Boy' Floyd, also known as `the sagebrush Robin Hood' due to his charitable tendencies of sharing his stolen proceeds with the Oklahoma `hill folk', of which he was one of, given their willingness to provide him with a safe haven from the authorities. In the beginning we see Floyd prior to his life of crime, as an oilfield worker and part time pugilist. After getting caught messing with the fight promoter's wife (according to this film, Floyd seemed to have a thing for married women), a series of events cause him to lose his job (he tried to hide his past, criminal history), forcing him to return home to the hills of Oklahoma, where he learns his faddah was killed sometime earlier by a local who was acquitted on the claim of self defense (it clearly wasn't), forcing Floyd to search out the man in order to settle the account. From here he takes off to Kansas City, basically bouncing back and forth, returning home to the safety of the hill folk when things got too hot in the big city. In return, Floyd spreads the wealth among the farmers, who are especially appreciative being hit as hard as they were by the Depression. Eventually his exploits draw the attention of state, and later federal, authorities, as, with each successful criminal exploit, Floyd becomes even more confident, and subsequently daring. This, in turn, garners him more attention and even celebrity status as newspapers nationwide begin reporting on his activities, painting him in a somewhat romantic light. After a shoot out with the police, one in which an officer is killed, Floyd heads off to New York only to get the bum's rush by the ruling crime lord (seems he's not receptive to Floyd's increasing notoriety and the trouble it would bring), returns to Kansas City, and participates in an attempt to break a local mobster from police custody. Things go very wrong resulting in what is now known as `The Kansas City Massacre', and Floyd finds himself on trial in mob court. He's cleared for his part, but, after the death of Dillinger, Floyd now secures the status of being public enemy number one, relentlessly hounded by the authorities, to the point where even his own folk can't, or won't, offer him their protection.
This was a somewhat enjoyable film, if you can stand a lot of the over dramatics, specifically various character's proclivities to go into lengthy monologues at the drop of a hat. I would have preferred a more toned down depiction, as what we have here really isn't a biopic (in my opinion), but something that takes key events in Floyd's criminal career and fills in the vast in-between, unknown parts with a whole lot of often histrionic and theatrical supposition, much of it seemingly skewed as such for entertainment purposes...a prime example being the near the end as a main character is gunned down by authorities, resulting in a death knell performance one would normally associate with a Bugs Bunny cartoon, as Bugs pretends to suffer painfully, throwing his arms out and wailing terribly, acting as if Elmer's shotgun blast actually hit its mark. Surprisingly, I felt the film didn't seem to try and portray Floyd in an overly negative or positive light, maintaining a relatively even keel, letting the audience come to their own conclusions towards his character. Ericson was a whole lot of fun to watch, as he had real screen presence, but man, could he lay it on thick. There's more ham in this film than in a bag of pork rinds, but I felt this was due more to Leder's script and direction, and the performers where just following his lead. At least it was a lively production, full of gunplay, would be molls, and colorful criminal characters with names like Shorty Walters, Big Dutch, and Machine Gun Manny, the last played by a very sweaty Al Lewis, who nearly stole the movie despite his meager role. Specifically I'm talking about the scene where he, along with Floyd and another character are facing a group of mobsters in a ridiculously goofy mock trial regarding the untimely demise of an associate they attempted to free from authorities. Turns out Al's character was directly responsible for the man's death, admitting to his role in almost scary, certainly psychotic fashion. It's worth checking out this film if only for that part. Another memorable scene featured Floyd in the hills, showing off his new machine gun to a gawky, hayseed friend named Curly. Curly, never having seen such a device, nearly wet himself in childlike excitement as Floyd demonstrated the weapon's effectiveness against a couple of barrels. I wanted to mention the musical scoring in this film, as I thought it was quite good, had it been for another movie. It was a very bouncy, jazzy, contemporary score, appropriate for the time the movie was made, but not so much for the period the story took place. It was more suited for a gritty crime drama set in the late fifties/early sixties, but not so much for a psuedo biopic set during the depression, and, as a result, the effect was one that often drew me out of the feature. All in all this wasn't a bad movie, but had it been shortened a good deal and the material less prone to the melodramatic, I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more.
Sony Wonder (Video) provides a fairly shabby release here, as the picture, presented in fullscreen (1.33:1), and appears to have been improperly matted during transfer, obvious early on as the credits list `ohn Ericson' as the star. There's also a bit of minor age deterioration present on the source material used, but nothing overly distracting. The audio, presented in Dolby Digital mono, wasn't as good, exhibiting an awful lot of noise and hiss, and sometimes the dialog was muddled and hard to discern. There are no extras provided on the disc, which didn't surprise me given the lack of effort towards the transfer. Overall, a substandard release of a decent gangster film that I would have normally given a solid three star rating, but because of Sony's indifference to quality in this case, I have to go with two stars.
Cookieman108
|
|
|
|
