It opens splendidly with a heist carried out without dialogue but to a jaunty Gerald Fried score making me almost wish Roger Corman's "Machine Gun Kelly" were a silent film. It isn't, of course, but this Z-Movie, made in eight days, is a lot of fun. It's not a biopic of the title character; he's real enough but everyone else is basically an invention 'for dramatic purposes' and it has a lot of the punchy quality of the old Warner Brothers' gangster movies.
Charles Bronson is excellent as Kelly and Susan Cabot is suitably hard-boiled as his moll while the supporting cast includes the always watchable Connie Gilchrist and Morey Amsterdam, he of 'Dick Van Dyke Show' fame. No-one would ever conclude from this that Corman was a great director but give this to me anyday over certain European art movies that pass for masterpieces in some quarters.
Charles Bronson is excellent as Kelly and Susan Cabot is suitably hard-boiled as his moll while the supporting cast includes the always watchable Connie Gilchrist and Morey Amsterdam, he of 'Dick Van Dyke Show' fame. No-one would ever conclude from this that Corman was a great director but give this to me anyday over certain European art movies that pass for masterpieces in some quarters.