GManfred The part of John Dillinger must have been red meat for Lawrence Tierney, the baddest of Hollywood's bad boys. A notorious brawler and sociopath, Tierney seems the embodiment of the erstwhile Public Enemy #1 and plays it to the hilt. This was his first starring turn and is remarkably at his ease in the part. In all subsequent roles he was belligerent and humorless, and I can't recall ever seeing him crack a smile."The Lad In Red" is lovely Anne Jeffreys, and the gang members are all familiar faces; Elisha Cook, Jr., Eduardo Cianelli, Marc Lawrence, and in a change from his normally sophisticated roles, Edmund Lowe as the gang leader. The picture is very entertaining and was made by Monogram, a charter member of Poverty Row. Here they've pulled out all the stops and produced a top notch gangster flick. If you're a fan of 'cops and robbers' movies you won't be disappointed. I've put my star rating in the heading as the website no longer prints them.

AaronCapenBanner Max Nosseck directed this biographical tale of the rise and fall of real-life criminal John Dillinger, here played by Lawrence Tierney as a ruthless and menacing man who isn't afraid of anyone or anything. He is sent to jail for armed robbery where he befriends gangster Specs Green(played by Edmund Lowe) and his associates(played by Marc Lawrence, Elisha Cook, and Eduardo Ciannelli) He later leads a prison breakout with a wooden gun, then becomes part of the gang, eventually taking it over, though this later leads to lethal consequences for Dillinger when he takes his girlfriend Helen(played by Anne Jeffreys) to a movie theater where the police are waiting... Good film may take some liberties with the facts but has solid acting and crisp direction.

vitaleralphlouis Amazing that 60+ years ago the low-budget Monogram Pictures made this Dillinger movie 9 times better than Universal's 2009 sorry looking mess, "Public Enemies." This 1945 movie grabs you from the opening credits and keeps your interest for the entire 70 minutes. That's right, 70 minutes. There's no need to pad this story into a 2 hour + boring mess.To begin with, and all-important, it's true that Lawrence Tierney was born to play Dillinger. He's perfect. Johnny Depp maybe was born to play Jack Sparrow, but he stumbles around looking stupid in the 2009 film.Just everything about the 1945 clicks like clockwork. Just one example is the simple-but-effective shootout at the Biograph Theater. The 2009 film ought get special honors for incredible multiple layers of Bad Film-making 101. In the 1945 gut-level film we have a bored and broke Dillinger taking his girl to the neighborhood movie for a few laughs. In the old days people went in and out of movie theaters all day, not at starting time. Thus when Dillinger steps outside there are just two people leaving, not the 500 marching out in "Public Enemies." So the FBI can easily spray him with bullets without hitting other folks.This fine Monogram Picture can be found on Netflix and other places. No need to settle for today's silly trash.

winner55 By no means true t the actual story of famed bank-robber John Dillinger, but may be true to the personality of the man. Tierney plays Dillinger unromantically as an unredeemable sociopath completely obsessed with getting money on his own terms. His depiction of Dillinger's transformation from punk wannabe to actual cold-hearted thug is completely believable. The supporting cast is all tops, especially Lowe and Elisha Cook Jr. in his best bad-guy performance. The cheap sets, integration of stock-footage, location shooting are all surprisingly effective - only some of the back-screen effects are weak. The script is demandingly tight but both the cast and the director are up for it - despite the fact that the story spreads across some 15 years, it moves right along, intent only on depiction of the high-points of its theme. It's an intentional throw-back to the Warner Bros. gangster films of the early thirties, which makes it top-of-the-line of a wave of crime B-mellers in the late '40s (also dominated by Warner Bros., which studio apparently insisted on this film losing the Academy Award for Best Screenplay, and which, with further irony, now owns its rights). And its hard to imagine a film that makes so much use of violence without any graphic depiction of it.A true gem of American B-movie history.