Gangs Inc. (1941)

Overrated and overhyped

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

****SPOILERS**** Cheaply made and photographed with many of the night action scenes in it so lacking of any kind of decent lighting that their almost unwatchable the film "Paper Bullets" or its DVD released title "Crime,Inc" has the distinction of having Alan Ladd in it in one of his first more then just bit part roles. Ladd plays Jimmy Kelly an undercover NY cop impersonating mob kingpin Bill Dugan. That fact that Dugan is behind bars in NY's Tombs Detention Center doesn't seem to alert his gang whom Jimmy Kelly has infiltrated. That's until he comes out of hiding or police protection and testifies against his startled partners in crime in open court at the very end of the film. But it's Joan Woodbury as convicted hit & run driver Rita Adams who takes center stage here as the person who took the rap for the crime that her drunken boyfriend Harold DeWitt, Philip Trent, committed.Having her gangster dad Jim Adams, Kenneth Harlam, who's a stool pigeon for the police gunned down, Mafia style, right in front of her eyes when she was 12 Rita was brought up in an orphanage and when she reached adulthood had trouble getting a job because of her dad's criminal record. Making ends meet by robbing unsuspecting men while hitchhiking and occasionally knocking off banks and check cashing joints Rita decided to go straight by getting a job at a local night club, doing all kinds off odd jobs there, and hooking up with Harold DeWitt who's pop Clarence, Gorge Pembroke, is one of the most prominent lawyers in town.Told by her lawyer Bruce King, Dayant Washburn, that if she pleads guilty to Harol's hit & run his pop Clarence DeWitt will do all he can to get her off the hook. As it turned out she in fact has the book thrown at her and given a one to five year sentence in woman's prison instead. Now with nothing to lose after getting out of prison Rita makes it a point to shake down Clarence DeWitt for big bucks in blackmailing him in her revealing that his son Harold, who had since been killed in a car accident, was the person whom she took the rap for.****SPOILERS**** It's never quite brought out in the movie just how Rita got herself involved with the Dugan Mob that Clarence DeWitt was secretly a member of. It may well have been her involvement with DeWitt that sucked her into becoming a member of the Dugan Mob without her actually knowing about it. Despite getting again convicted along with her fellow mob members, including Clarence DeWitt, on 11 felony counts including racketeering jury and wiriness tampering as well as murder Rita did end up getting her wish come true. That's by having a park built her honor for young kids to spend their free time playing stick & hand ball among other games and not get themselves involved in the world of crime. And thus have them develop a healthy attitude towards life which Rita never did or had a chance to have. As for Alan Ladd he went on to bigger and better things or movie roles that established him as one of the top Hollywood actors in both the 1940's & 1950's.

Although Alan Ladd has a supporting role in Paper Bullets and in fact gives the film its title, the star here is Joan Woodbury who plays a girl done wrong by the worthless guy she loves and then starts taking it out on a lot of people.In a brief prologue to the story Woodbury as a child sees her gangster father gunned down for being a stool pigeon. She then spends the rest of her childhood in an orphanage where she meets two of the men who would later play critical roles in her life.This woman learned not a thing from her tough upbringing however. She stupidly agrees to plead guilty to a vehicular homicide that her drunk date Philip Trent committed and she goes to prison for it. That gives her a far more cynical attitude and for the rest of the film, Woodbury is giving as good as she gets as she rises in the gangland underworld.Woodbury developed one interesting character, it's a pity that it is attached to a muddled story which drifts off on tangents. The two men in her life are aircraft designer John Bryant and gangster Jack LaRue who also were in that same orphanage. LaRue has a similarly interesting character, but he's also defeated by the script and horrible editing.As for Alan Ladd he's the only reason this PRC B feature is remembered. He also shows something of what his tightlipped screen persona would be like when he became a star. Ladd plays an undercover cop.As for the title Ladd tells one of his associates that the gangsters now use Paper Bullets to control a city which are votes. Now that's something today's audience can identify with.

Right out of the box, this had the makings of a pretty good revenge flick, but that plot got slowly frittered away with off tangent events that didn't move the story forward satisfactorily. I saw the film under the reissue title "Gangs, Inc.", part of a 4 DVD/sixteen film 'Mobsters' movie set well worth it's ten dollar price tag. This one falls slightly below average against the rest of the ones in the collection, a shame because it could have been a lot better.I guess the main problem with the story is that even though Rita Adams (Joan Woodbury) ultimately gets her revenge against the crime syndicate that rubbed out her father, she wound up going the same route as the bad guys by sharing the same fate with a guilty verdict. The goon that she took the rap for in a fatal hit and run accident wound up written out of the story in an off screen auto accident, so there was no way for her to exact revenge on him directly. The job of infiltrating the crime combine fell to Alan Ladd's character Jimmy Kelly, but don't blink or you'll miss his connection to the story. Kelly's girlfriend Donna (Linda Ware) has a couple of singing numbers in the film, but other than being friends with Rita, there's no other reason for her being there as she plays no role in the outcome either.What you have here is a movie that on the surface looks like it's actually going somewhere but never arrives. The ending closes on a dedication sign for a playground, presumably on the grounds of the orphanage that took in the young Rita Adams left fatherless in the early part of the story. This viewer was left surmising that the sign was paid for with Rita's share of her ill gotten mob money.

Flipping through the channels I was lucky enough to stumble upon the beginning of this movie. I must admit that it grabbed my attention almost immediately. I love older films and this is or should be considered a classic! One of the most wonderful rarities of this movie is that the main character was not only female but she was also a bad girl. I highly recommend this movie!