The St. Valentine's
Day Massacre
Director: Roger Corman
Year: 1967
Rating: 7.0
Nostalgic gangster films based on true life characters made a comeback of
sorts in the late 1950's/1960's - perhaps due to the success of the TV show
The Untouchables. Murder Inc., Mad Dog Coll and Bonnie and Clyde are a few
of the others. Roger Corman, who had made Machine-Gun Kelly in 1958 starring
Charles Bronson, pitched the idea of depicting the events leading up to the
St. Valentine's Massacre to 20th Century Fox. They gave him a budget $2.5
million which was enough for Corman to make 5 films - so he made the film
for $400,000. And that shows a bit - the sets never really look authentic
- but still this is an enjoyable rat-a-tat-tat film with the gangs of Capone
and Bugs Moran going after one another in 1929. It is narrated in The Untouchable's
style and as far as I know, all the actions and characters were based on
what really happened.
For his $400,000 budget Corman got a pretty good cast - Jason Robards as
Capone, Ralph Meeker as Moran, George Segal as one of Moran's hired killers
(but it is hard for me to take Segal seriously as a cold-blooded killer and
the fight with his moll felt like it was out of The Owl and the Pussycat),
Bruce Dern as a mechanic (professional killer) and other familiar faces that
always seem to show up in Italian gangster films. Of course where this film
leaves off, Some Like It Hot begins.