A crusading young politician is running for mayor on a program of cleaning up the graft-ridden politics of a big city. However, all of his opponent are mysteriously being shot to death, which does him no good, and the coroner can't even find the bullets in the bodies of the dead men. A young lawyer is elected mayor of the city and promises to rid it of the corruption it's famous for. The problem is that most of the corruption he's vowed to eliminate is caused by the crooked political machine that helped elect him. This production by William Berke stars Evalyn Knapp and Preston Foster. If you've never heard of William Berke Productions , join the crowd—as this was a small-time 'poverty row' film company that only released a few low-budget films.<br/><br/>The film begins with Foster being elected mayor. He's an idealistic man who announces his plans on ridding the town of corruption—not realizing how many from his party and his friends are actually evil weasels. Fortunately, he's not completely naïve and manages to put up a pretty good fight..at first. However, a corrupt party, a corrupt press and a corrupt prosecutor make mincemeat of the poor guy almost as soon as he assumes office. And, once cleared of this set up trumped up charges, up come some more. Can goodness triumph over evil? This is an enjoyable B-movie, though I must admit it has many shortcomings. The most important is that so-called ice bullets are apparently impossible as demonstrated on a recent episode of "Myth Busters". Additionally, the writing was a bit sloppy. For example, removing Foster from office was amazingly easy—too easy. Plus it was painfully obvious that the secretary (Knapp) was wonderful—so why did it take so long for Foster to recognize this?! Still, an exciting plot make this a tolerably good B-movie. Here is a typical indie city crime drama of the early 30s with an assortment of "name" players doing a paycheck job with a fairly dull script. There is a mystery killer plot tied in, with a fairly inventive gimmick to his method of killing. The print is better than many an Alpha release, although, annoyingly, someone has dubbed in extra sound effects. They occur during the two scenes in Mischa Auer's laboratory, and I assume Alpha Video is the culprit, since similar predations occur on other 30s releases by this company. Auer has test tubes bubbling, and someone has dubbed in what sounds like the largest witch's cauldron ever. The bubbling and popping is so loud as to make the dialog hard to hear in spots. The film's real claim to fame, I feel, occurs in the last 20 seconds as the corrupt Gorman stalks out of Preston Foster's office. He is flipped off by the wiseacre reporter (Charles Delaney) in a full middle-finger salute. I replayed this to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. Apparently this gesture was contemporaneous to '33 – but perhaps its translation into words wasn't universally agreed upon. Unless I misapprehended the finger he used, this moment deserves mention in a social history of 20th Century America, or at least a history of rude gestures.
Wynwer replied
294 weeks ago