Guns Girls and Gangsters (1959)

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Given the title Guns, Girls And Gangsters I was ready to trash even with what I thought was an interesting cast. But this independent film from United Artists turned out to be a lot better than I thought it would be given budget constraints.Gerald Mohr is newly released from prison and he's got the germ of an idea for an armored car heist on the highway from Las Vegas to Los Angeles near the California/Nevada state line. It takes some split second timing and someone, namely him, who has to make a very accurate rifle shot.It also depends on Mamie Van Doren checking into and occupying a room at a motel with a gas station and auto repair shop within feet of the spot picked by Mohr. Mamie being Mamie has a lot of men interested in here, but they keep some distance because her husband Lee Van Cleef was Mohr's cellmate in the penitentiary is a most jealous type with a hair trigger. In fact the whole idea for the heist came from Van Cleef while he and Mohr were together in prison.As in these films things that you can't plan for usually are what upsets the apple cart. In this case a jealous Van Cleef busts out of the joint with only three months left on his sentence.Due to the nature of the plot Van Cleef only appears in the second half of the film. But when he comes on, he dominates. This is definitely one of his best early films.The whole cast is outstanding. Mamie Van Doren always gives us something to look forward to. But Lee Van Cleef just totally steals Guns, Girls, And Gangsters.Don't dismiss this one because of the exploitive title. This one is a real find.

Guns, Girls and Gangsters (1959)** 1/2 (out of 4)Chuck Wheeler (Gerald Mohr) gets released from prison and decides to hold up an armor truck outside of Las Vegas. He gets involved with his cell mates former squeeze (Mamie Van Doren) but everything gets messed up when that guy (Lee Van Cleef) breaks out of prison and wants in on the action. The best thing about GUNS, GIRLS AND GANGSTERS is the rather catchy title and while nothing new is done for the crime genre, overall this here is a pretty fun "B" movie as long as you don't take it too serious or expect any sort of masterpiece. A lot of the film's entertainment value must be given to the cast who manage to fit their roles nicely and they help keep the film moving. I thought Mohr did a nice job in the role as the baddie as he had no problem being tough but you could also like him. It was fun seeing Van Cleef in a film long before he hit that image of the Sergio Leone films. He too manages to do a nice job in the role of the real villain without any redeeming factors. Mrs. Mamie Van Doren certainly is a looker and she manages to fit the role nicely but I will freely admit that her singing numbers were rather painful and should have been cut out all together. Director Edward L. Cahn manages to build up some nice drama at the end during the finale, which also includes some excellent gun fights and a rather violent conclusion. The narration that runs throughout the picture is certainly something very weak and just wait until you hear that closing line! I'm sure it was meant to be tough or raw yet it comes off hilariously bad. GUNS, GIRLS AND GANGSTERS should appeal to those who enjoy "B" pictures.

With a title like "Guns, Girls, and Gangsters", the movie could be headed in only one direction— the local drive-in. Add top-heavy van Doren to the head of the marquee, and you've got a real teenage winner. So what if the result comes off like a 3rd-rate rip-off of Kubrick's classic The Killing of two years before, replete with time-ticking narration. True, there's some imagination that went into the details of the armored car heist here; too bad, however, that the imagination didn't carry over to the lame climax. It's like they were running out of film and had to wrap right away.The movie does have two of B-movies' more underrated tough guys—Mohr and van Cleef. Between them they charge the 80-minutes with some needed authority. Too bad van Cleef makes a late arrival, because their rivalry sets off sparks and could easily have replaced the awkward van Doren's screen time, which is also taken up by two of the most forgettable songs on record. A better script and more imaginative direction minus van Doren could have turned this uneven exercise into a no-nonsense Plunder Road (1958) type, which was also a cheap, but very well executed heist film.(In passing—I wonder if someone in Sinatra's so-called Rat Pack caught this obscure production since the premise looks a lot like Sinatra's Ocean's Eleven {1960}.)

Chuck Wheeler (Gerald Mohr) gets out of prison and heads to Las Vegas to enact an elaborate heist where he plans to steal an armored car carrying over $2 million in post-New Year's gambling money. He enlists the aide of local gangster Joe Darren (Grant Richards) and his lounge singer fiancé Vi (Mamie Van Doren), who just happens to be the wife of Wheeler's old cell mate. They plan everything out and it looks like it will go smoothly until Vi's ex-husband, Mike (Lee Van Cleef), breaks out of jail. This is a quick moving B-picture and director Edward L. Cahn never lets it lag through its 70 minutes. Van Doren isn't as much of a bad girl as in the previous feature I saw, VICE RAID. Here she is more of a good girl caught in a bad situation. To show how good she is, Van Doren gets two musical numbers in this one. Surprisingly, they don't play up her curves as much as VICE, but the swelling horn section is still abused plenty on the soundtrack. The supporting cast is all good and it is funny to know that even when he was young, Van Cleef still looked old.