Customer Reviews

Lady Killer [VHS]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

James Cagney stars as a conman that winds up a Hollywood star trying to escape his shady past. The story begins with Cagney first getting conned by a group of con artists, then joining them and moving them on to much bigger games. When they turn on him, Cagney ends up in Los Angeles, where he works his way up the "extra" ladder to becoming a top star. Of course, his criminal "friends" want the bigger game that he can now bring them, possibly bringing an end to the life he has made for himself. This is the perfect kind of role for the young Cagney. It allows him to display the cocky attitude, intelligence, aggressiveness, and humour that made him the immortal screen character he became. The two elements of the story mix well. The con game aspect is fun to watch as people cross and double cross each other. But it's also fun watching the fish-out-of-water Cagney adjusting to life in movies, giving us a glimpse of life behind the camera in 1930's Hollywood. Margaret Lindsay is competent as usual as Cagney's actress-girlfriend, while Mae Clarke is fun as one of his partners in the con games. Once again, Clarke gets pushed around (and pulled by the hair!) in a Cagney film, providing some of the film's highlights. Like most of the Warner Brothers films directed by Roy Del Ruth in the 1930's, Lady Killer moves along quickly, with plenty of in-your-face action and laughs, giving you a prime look at vintage Cagney.

A cinema usher turns to crime, flees to Hollywood and becomes a movie player: a hectic slam-bang action comedy with melodratic moments. Great fun. Cagney play Dan Quigley, a man who finds he's been the victim of a confidence set-up. Dan threatens the gang with exposure unless they cut him in on the profits. Quigley works the racket so well, they are able to open a swank gambling club which is patronised by wealthy customers. Eventually the cops suspect illicit dealings and the gang leave town en route to Los Angeles, where Dan gets arrested. Because there isn't enough evidence in order to hold him, the police release Quigley. Looking like a hobo, he's hired for work as a movie extra...A thoroughly enjoyable thirties spoof of gangsters and Hollywood, in this one poor Mae Clarke is pulled by Jimmy - by him grabbing her hair! The original working title for the film was THE FINGER MAN...

Lady Killer is a marvelous, much overlooked vehicle for the great Jimmy Cagney to showcase his numerous talents. Cagney does comedy, his typical gangster type role, a little bit of drama and more in this snappy motion picture.

The action starts when Dan Quigley (Cagney) gets fired from his job as a movie theater usher; and when he gets taken by a group of small time con artists he joins them rather than getting even with them. Soon we meet Mae Clarke as Myra Gale, Duke (Leslie Fenton) and Spade Maddock (Douglas Dumbrille) along with a few more shady characters in the group of con artists.

Things go bad when an accidental murder takes place during a jewel heist; and they eventually all flee to California to escape the heat. Things aren't easy; the cops are still after them but at least in California they have a little breathing room. Just by chance, a couple of studio headhunters find Quigley and offer him a bit part in a movie. Things get even more interesting when Dan Quigley rises to stardom and meets a woman he truly loves, Lois Underwood (Margaret Lindsay).

Of course, the plot can go anywhere from here. Will Quigley and Underwood become a couple? Will the police catch Quigley and his former con artist friends? What if the con artist group catches up with Quigley after he becomes a Hollywood star? No spoilers here, folks--you'll have to watch the movie to find out!

The choreography is very well done in the scenes where Cagney is acting in a film within the film; and the cinematography works well, too.

Overall, this fine Jimmy Cagney vehicle stands the test of time as a very good and underappreciated movie. I highly recommend this film for fans of the great Jimmy Cagney; and people who enjoy classic movies will love this one, too!

The young con gets conned. And that's how it starts in a crooked card game with femme fatale Mae Clarke setting the bait. You'll remember Mae, she's the same actress who took the grapefruit in the face in 'Public Enemy'.

James Cagney is perfect as the street wise punk who joins a gang after they fleece him. The action (and the plot) move along fast enough to keep any viewer interested. True to it's 'pre-code' status, the subject material is adult. There are few innocent people here. Cagney stays with the gang pulling several 'jobs' until a bystander is killed.

In Hollywood, the gang betrays him again and leaves for Mexico with Jimmy's money. Gagney joins a motion picture studio working as an extra. He soon rises to stardom with Margaret Lindsey as his new flame. The gang returns to blackmail him but Jimmy gets them in the end. Plenty of pre-code fun. Jimmy and Mae mix it up again with Jimmy doing the rough stuff. I would recommend this film to Jimmy Cagney fans and pre-code fans.

Lady Killer is a great film with a little bit of everything so that everyone who watches it gets what they want.

It starts out with a gangster/swindler series of scenes. Cagney joins in on a card game and realized he's been scammed, so instead of turning the group in, he gets in on the action. This genre returns later in the film, ending in a shootout during a car chase.

The next part of the film is set in Hollywood as Cagney rises in the ranks to becoming a star. This sequence involves a love story with the beautiful Margaret Lindsay who plays an accomplished star. The two have some great scenes together. One involves a scene in which they are filming a historical drama together. Lindsay wears a scandalously low-cut gown revealing forbidden cleavage. Cagney wears a ridiculous period costume. Later, Lindsay wears a rather ugly evening gown made of what looks like a large, cheap sleeveless cloth with a sheer black undershirt. Horrendous.

The last bit of the film that is sure to tickle the comedy tastebuds of the audience is a slapstick scene involving a group of monkeys ruining a party.

This is certainly a star vehicle for Cagney who shines in his diverse role. His character is wonderfully confident, bordering on cocky with incredibly expressive eyes. He is horribly mean to the women in the film, but in some ways is understandably so.

This film is part of the Forbidden Hollywood series and includes a brief commentary from Leonard Maltin.

Cagney is the man here in this little-known politically incorrect masterpiece. Think Eminem and Dennis Rodman have attitude? Watch the Cag man at his rudest, wildest, and most appealing (or apalling, depending on your point of view). See our man out-crook some crooked crooks, flout all authority along the way, slap Mae Clark around and literally kick her out of his apartment,ruin a swanky party by turning some monkeys loose, trick some studio exces into making him a star, etc. Yeah, this film is fun if you don't take it seriously, but I wouldn't recommend it for the kiddies. While the Cag man's gall and brashness is hilarious for stable-minded adults to laugh at who know better, no one would want to see impressionable children or weak-minded adults copy this kind of behavior in real life. So folks, be careful who you watch this with and you'll have a ball!

The product information on this film lists everyone in the cast but the real star and the reason to watch this film - James Cagney.
1933's "Lady Killer" reteams James Cagney with Mae Clarke, their previous teaming being in Cagney's star vehicle "The Public Enemy". Cagney plays Dan Quigley, a movie usher who gets fired and then falls in with a gang of hoodlums to make ends meet and plus he likes the excitement. However, when a robbery at a mansion goes very wrong, Quigley leaves town and heads for California. There he does well as an actor in the movies until his old gang hears about his success and his past deeds come back to haunt him. Here poor Mae Clarke gets slapped around again, just as she had been in "Public Enemy". No wonder that she looks so worriedly at that grapefruit in the California travel brochure. For those of you who have seen "Public Enemy" you know what I mean. The extra features on this DVD are:
Two exclusive WB shorts: The Camera Speaks and Kissing Time
Original theatrical trailer
WB cartoon: The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives

I'd tell you about the true story this film is based on, but it might be perceived as giving away the ending. This film is part of the larger third volume of The Warner Gangsters, which is a boxed set that is released on the same day as this movie.

I've been watching a lot of early Cagney movies lately (thanks to TCM). One of the better ones was "Lady Killer". James Cagney plays his usual brash self right from the start where we see him too smart for his own good. He gets into a situation where he gets taken and then becomes the taker. In time, he and his "gang" have become rather successful but may have tried to reach too far. After making tracks for the other side of the country (while on the lam), Cagney stumbles into an opportunity to make it in the movie business. Some of the movie's insights to the sometimes random road to stardom come across rather humorous. Later, his old gang shows up at the wrong time and threatens to spoil the fun. Well, enough of the plot; you get the idea.

As in many of the movies of that era, some of the situations are a bit hard to swallow; reality movies didn't come along until later. However, watching the smooth artistry of Cagney is worth while and "Lady Killer" is a good enough movie to catch him in. He's one of the greatest actors of his generation and defines "tough guy" better than even the likes of Bogart. In their prime, Cagney didn't seem to draw the sure-winning scripts that Bogart did so he seems to be in danger of drifting into Hollywood oblivion. Outside of "Yankee Doodle Dandy", there are many of his movie that command respect these days. "White Heat" ranks right up there in talent but no where near "Yankee Doodle Dandy" in popularity. That's really unfortunate because he was a real talent. But then, if you're reading this, you already know that.

When James Cagney squished a grapefruit into the squealing face of Mae Clarke in PUBLIC ENEMY (1931), he began a trend of abuse to women that has percolated on and off in Hollywood since then. PUBLIC ENEMY was a serious if cliched crime drama that required grit on the part of the audience to view. Two years later, in LADY KILLER, director Roy Del Ruth took off some of the edginess from a snarling Cagney and morphed him from a stereotypical punk to one whose snarling exterior hid a gentler and, surprisingly enough, a more humorous interior. Mae Clarke in LADY KILLER is a mirror image of Cagney's character. She is initially portrayed as a heartless grifter who scams kind gentlemen into playing in a crooked poker game. Enter Cagney as one of those recently unemployed men whose non-working status must have resonated with the audience of a depression that had been ripping America apart for nearly four years. She rips him off not once but twice. However, Del Ruth gives hints that beneath her grifty-edged brassiness lies a woman who at least can slowly see in Cagney a reason to revive her latent decency. During the course of the seventy-four minutes of the film, both Cagney and Clarke bounce off each other in all the right ways that show that in a different moral universe, they might have been happy together. Their relation, therefore, is based on the premise that the moral depravity of a long standing depression could be leavened by finding one's mirror image. The other female lead is Margaret Lindsay, who plays an established Hollywood star who helps Cagney become a movie star in his own right even as he is on the lam from his grifting relation with Mae Clarke. Lindsay is sweetness personified, and in her untainted self, she is ordained as the woman who can pick up the pieces of a healing Cagney that Clarke helped to crush when the latter took off with Cagney's bail money, thus forcing him to remain in jail on a variety of charges.

LADY KILLER starts off in much the same manner as did PUBLIC ENEMY, but the oddly changing relation of Cagney and Clarke soon enough lets the audience know that in this universe at least, a much needed sense of humor and fun must emerge. There is even an inside joke in a train station about a grapefruit that no one in the audience would fail to connect to PUBLIC ENEMY. By the film's midpoint, the scene in which Cagney disrupts Lindsay's birthday party with a dozen monkeys clearly continues the process of demythologizing Cagney as a straight hoodlum. In another scene, Cagney plays an Italian giggolo in a movie within this movie who has the uprorious task of romancing Lindsay right after a lover's quarrel. During the last ten minutes, LADY KILLER combines a standard plot of the hero's former crooked pals now trying to kill him in a car chasing machine gun popping scene with a more human and calmer hero who can look at his new girlfriend (Lindsay) and see that his old one (Clarke) are not all that different after all. Even now, some seven decades later, the audience can gasp and cry and laugh in a roller coaster fashion and still wonder if Cagney really wound up with the right woman.

For anyone who enjoys James Cagney, this is a must-see. Yes, it's early in his career, but it's vintage Cagney: cocky, quick-tempered but humorous and likable as always. I was so glad to see it finally come out on DVD in March of 2008.

Instead of being a gangster throughout the story, he starts off that way in New York, runs off to Los Angeles and then goes straight after being hired as a Hollywood extra in a movie. He becomes a star but then his old gang catches up with him and he has to deal with them.

Along the way, three of the supporting actors combine with Cagney to make this a very fast-moving 74-minute film. They are Mae Clark, as the female villain "Myra Gale," Margaret Lindsay at the good woman "Lois Underwood," and Douglass Dumbrille as "Spade," the former leader of the New York gang. All are very convincing in their roles under the able work of director Roy Del Ruth.

You can tell this was a pre-code film just looking at Lindsay's ample cleavage, something that would have been covered up a bit more if the film had been made the following year.

One thing you certainly wouldn't see in today's films was the scene showing Cagney grabbing Clark by the hair and dragging her across the room, then booting her out in the hallway! (This is the same actress who received the famous grapefruit-in-the-face from Cagney in "Public Enemy.")

Anyway, yes the film is dated in much of the dialog and attitudes but it's so entertaining, so much fun to watch that it would still appeal to a good-sized audience today, too.