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Wonderful Movie

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

That was an excellent one.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

This movie is driven by one of the characters' supposedly brilliant schemes. Since these are either unexplained or senseless, and the rest of the script is dull and plodding, the simplest advice is "skip it."Tim Channing (Victor McLaglen) catches 12 year old newsboy Dan Moran using slugs in a slot machine in his bar, but lets him go when Moran gives him a brilliant plan for taking over the town's rackets. The brilliant plan? An army of newsboys putting slugs in the other guys' slot machines. At least it's no less far-fetched than the later evidences of Moran's brilliant mind.Ten years later, Channing, now mob boss, is putting the grownup Moran (John Baer) through law school, where he discovers an unspecified law that clears Channing of unspecified charges, and an equally mysterious one that prevents one of his henchmen from being extradited for murder. But after graduation, Moran, now in love with a judge's high-class daughter, played with all the hauteur of a waitress in a diner by Kathleen Crowley, wants to go straight. He invents a new legitimate business, that makes no sense, for Channing, which is undermined for no reason in a way that makes no sense by Channing's associates. But don't worry, the DA's office is somehow gathering evidence by substituting pencils using a special lead in Moran's office.Finally we get to a shootout on a ski lift (presumably because the makers of this cheapo epic had access to a ski lift), as incomprehensibly edited as the rest of the movie, and there it ends, as if a couple of guys getting shot ends everyone's legal problems.Unfortunately the moments of unintentional comedy are too few, and the rest is just boring. There are tons of old movies available and this one is near the bottom of the list.

One only has to get about five minutes into the film before realizing that it is derivative of about two-dozen other films----low-ranking gangster adopts and educates a young street hoodlum only to have his protégé turn against him.Dan Mason (Jimmy Grohman), a twelve-year-old newsboy, is an expert at figuring all the angles; so, when Kink (billed as Kay Kuter), veteran bartender at Billy's Steak House, catches him winning a big jackpot in the battered old slot machines that belong to seedy Tim Channing (Victor McLaglen), he not only defies them to do anything about it but shows Tim how he can corner the slot-machine racket and, at the same time, put his big-racketeer competitors Tony Finetti (Anthony Caruso) and Angelo Di Bruno (Richard Reeves) out of the running.Thusly begins a partnership between the larcenous---but big-hearted---Tim and the precocious newsboy that lasts and prospers while he is growing up. (A plot premise not new then and still being used today.) Reaching college age Dan (now John Baer)studies law, showing a greater aptitude for finding loopholes in the law than an inclination to uphold it, despite the advice of his law-school Dean (John Maxwell) and the wholesome companionship of his roommate Roy Fellows (Nicolas Coaster), whose father (Charles Meredith) is a retired judge.But Dan meets Roy's sister Fern (Kathleen Crowley)and his family, and the sincerity and friendliness of Roy's parents and the open adoration of Fern make him begin to work on the right side of the law instead of against it. So, after graduating from law school, Dan agrees to go to work for his old friend Tim...but only if it is honest work.Tim promises him it will be, but then Finetti and Di Bruno show up from the old days and Tim is put into a compromising position..and things aren't going just exactly as Dan planned and Tim promised...oh, you've seen it several times and can finish it from here? Thought so.

Victor McLaglen has a ball as Big Tim Channing in this forgotten, yet enjoyable, 1950's gangster movie. With all the stand-by's (Frank Ferguson as crusading D.A., Paul Maxey as crooked lawyer, Anthony Caruso as a two-bit thug), this "B" actioner delivers what you would expect, and a bit more. It probably was intended to elevate the career of its lead, John Baer. As such pretty boys go, he's not too bad, but I never heard of him again. Still, it's a good way to kill an hour and change.

This movie is so low-budget, and the cast generates so much goodwill, that you have to be kind to it. Plot is nothing special, but told with enough of a twist, and with enough smiles, that it deserves notice. Victor MacLaglen is marvelous as an aging thug, and Nicholas Coster makes a striking debut as a young law student. Nothing special, but it moves fast, and you'll have a bit of fun with the production values and stock footage.