Dillinger Details

This is an extraordinarily effective Monogram B movie, very successful in its day and still playing theatrically over 20 years later in a double-bill with the 1959 film, Al Capone. Budget limitations are obvious, most notably in a virtual lack of period art direction — or indeed any art direction! — but a tough, tight, Oscar-nominated screenplay by Phil Yordan more than compensates. The persuasive direction is by the eclectic Max Nosseck, whose career stretches from shooting cheap movies in Yiddish on Long Island to making the first nudist feature, the infamous Garden of Eden. Lawrence Tierney, Scott Brady's brother, is tight-lipped as public enemy number one John Dillinger, and in recent years displayed the same uncompromising leathery quality as the ringleader of those pesky Reservoir Dogs. The story was remade in 1973 with Warren Oates, just as effectively but far less memorably.