Producer-director Roger Corman got his first taste of directing a big studio project with his 1967 film The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The movie takes a poker-faced docudrama approach to telling the story of what led up to the fateful day in 1929 when seven Chicago mobsters were rubbed out effectively leading to the police and the FBI ending the reign of terror of mobsters in that city. While it’s filled with incident and lots of information, the movie’s rather antiseptic approach to the narrative makes it less involving that that of a more celebrated criminal-based movie of 1967, Bonnie and Clyde whose innovative cinematic techniques would make the photography and effects in Massacre seem very dated indeed in a very short time.
Studio: Fox
Distributed By: Twilight Time
Video Resolution and Encode: 1080P/AVC
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audio: English 1.0 DTS-HDMA (Mono)
Subtitles: English SDH
Rating: Not Rated
Run Time: 1 Hr. 40 Min.
Package Includes: Blu-ray
keep caseDisc Type: BD50 (dual layer)
Region: All
Release Date: 02/10/2015
MSRP: $29.95
The Production Rating: 3/5
Narrated laconically by Paul Frees who intercedes continuously through the film by giving background information on the cast of characters and later on relating what happens to the survivors after the events of the film have transpired, the movie jumps back and forth in time catching the viewer up on the reasons for the rivalries between the Northside and Southside gangs and showing us various attempts on the lives of Capone (one of the film’s key sequences as a succession of Moran’s crew each unload full machine gun magazines on a restaurant where Al is dining) and other key players which bring emotions bubbling to a boil on that fateful Valentine’s Day morning. The script by Howard Browne often hits the mark filling in what we need to know at any given moment, but with the succession of gangland characters with lengthy monikers and ever-crazier nicknames, it’s easy to get somewhat lost with which person is on whose side of the skirmish. A couple of scenes could have been excised altogether including a completely unnecessary scene where Moran’s number two man Peter Gusenberg (George Segal) roughs up his girl friend Myrtle (Jean Hale) for trading his birthday gift in for an expensive mink coat. Their knockabout fight where they punch, slap, and kick one another as well as destroy their apartment is one long sequence without any real purpose (we’d already seen Gusenberg brutally intimidate a bartender who was a Capone customer, so this extra scene didn’t tell us anything about him we didn’t already know).
While director Roger Corman must have relished having the resources of a major Hollywood studio at his disposal for the first time, the fact remains that the film doesn’t have much period flavor with the Chicago streets obvious studio backlot locations that rarely suggest the bustling metropolis of Chicago in the 1920s. Had the movie been made a year later, Corman might also have been able to make the film’s ample amounts of violence more visceral than he is able to do here. While there are plenty of shootings, he falls back on the old techniques of using sound effects and cutaways at the moment of impact to keep the violence contained (as well as thick, pasty concoctions dripped on costumes to signify blood). As Bonnie and Clyde’s horrific displays of gut –churning violence would prove later in 1967, a new era in portraying cinematic violence was dawning, and The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre would seem to be one of the last of the old guard attempts of picturing gun sprays and their bloodcurdling aftermath in a more old-fashioned way.
Corman wanted Orson Welles to play Al Capone, and what brilliant casting that would have been had it happened. Jason Robards (who had earlier been penciled-in for Bugs Moran) neither looks nor seems particularly comfortable in the shoes of Chicago’s number one criminal though he blusters and bristles as well as he can. Ralph Meeker does fine as Moran, and George Segal and David Canary do reasonably well as the Gusenberg brothers who back him up. Clint Ritchie is all smiles and charm as pretty boy Jack McGurn while Harold J. Stone makes for a stoic but not particularly threatening Frank Nitti. A wonderful array of character actors portray various members of the Capone and Moran gangs including Frank Silvera, Joseph Campanella, Bruce Dern, Kurt Kreuger, Joseph Turkel, Milton Frome, and even Corman favorite Jack Nicholson in a rather minor role but getting to take part in the film's climactic set piece.
Video Rating: 4.5/5 3D Rating: NA
Audio Rating: 4.5/5
Special Features Rating: 3/5
Roger Corman Remembers (3:31, SD): an excruciatingly short reminiscence with the producer-director in which he mentions the film’s million dollar budget (his biggest ever to that date though small by Fox standards), his thrill in being able to use standing sets from Hello, Dolly!, The Sand Pebbles, and The Sound of Music in keeping his budget under control, and how he choreographed the final massacre so it could be caught in one take.
Fox Movietone News (4:41, SD): four brief excerpts of news items over the years dealing with Al Capone.
Theatrical Trailer (2:32, SD)
Six-Page Booklet: contains a selection of movie stills, original poster art on the back cover, and film historian Julie Kirgo’s entertaining analysis of the movie.
Overall Rating: 3.5/5
Reviewed By: Matt Hough
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