The Beast of The City (Blu-ray)

From the days when Walter Huston was still a dramatic and romantic lead rather than a crazy gold prospecting old codger and when Wallace Ford could pull a dame like Jean Harlow, 1932's The Beast of the City is a reminder than while it may have been the Tiffanys of movie studios in the golden age, a large part of Metro Goldwyn Mayer's pre-Production Code output was aimed at the working man and woman and they could get their hands as dirty as the smaller Warner Bros. when they took on their dominance of the gangster movie genre. Being an MGM picture the focus is on the cops rather than robbers (it even starts with a Herbert Hoover quote slamming the media for making heroes out of gangsters rather than cops in a slam to their rival) and having an MGM budget when Huston addresses his men there's at least 150 of them in the room while it's literally standing room only in the packed cells. While it may seem a more obvious vehicle for their biggest and burliest star of the day Wallace Beery as either hero or villain, here honest cop Huston faces off with that noted humanitarian Jean Hersholt, who has corrupted his vice cop brother Ford.

Warner Archive have tried to sell this as a proto-Dirty Harry because of the incredibly nihilistic ending, but a much better comparison would be the ending of The Wild Bunch. While all of the cast are pretty good - though gangland mouthpiece Tully Marshall really makes a five course banquet meal of his plea to the jury - it's Harlow who makes the…

A fascinating crime movie without a hint of horror...YET ANOTHER 1932 EARLY SHORT b/w MGM film that Warner Archive have proven their strength of technical wizardry... a beautiful new restoration of a little film that has little to offer but Jean Harlow in an early small role and an average crime story about gangsters and their molls.