YOUNG DILLINGER (1965)

We first see young John Dillinger (Nick Adams) and his young girlfriend Elaine (Mary Ann Mobley)---it's implied that they are 21 years old, give or take a year—rolling around, making out in the grass. Worked up into a lather, she decides they should get married right away but he worries about money, so she suggests they break into her father's company's safe that night. They do but are caught and recognized by the night watchman. The two get away and head to a justice of the peace for a quick wedding, but he won't perform the ceremony without proper ID. Living together in the big city, they go out to see James Cagney in The Public Enemy after Dillinger does a passable imitation of him, but are soon caught. Elaine's father asks Dillinger to take the fall and leave his daughter out of it, promising a lenient jail sentence, but instead he's given five to twenty years. His cellmate is Pretty Boy Floyd (the fairly pretty Robert Conrad) and after an initial scuffle in which they beat each other up, they become buddies. Along with Baby Face Nelson and Homer Van Meter, the four plot an escape. They fake an uprising and Dillinger helps the guards, setting himself up for an early release, after which he will contact a gangster named Rocco in Chicago to come and break them out. But the plans don't quite work. Instead of being released, Dillinger is sent to an honor farm. During the transfer, Elaine shows up to help him escape. Rocco rejects his plea for help, after which Dillinger spits in his face, then guns him down. Still, somehow, Dillinger and Elaine help his three prisoner buddies escape during a work detail, and, along with some feminine company, they form a gang pulling off small-scale robberies. Floyd gets in touch with a former mentor named Hoffman (the running joke is that they treat him like a college professor) who sets up a couple of jobs for them, but during an armored car robbery, things go sideways and Dillinger is wounded. When Dillinger's face appears in the newspapers, he has a shady doctor perform plastic surgery to change his looks. While Dillinger is recovering (in lots of pain and waiting for a shot of morphine), the doc tries to rape Elaine, on top of which, the surgery doesn't take. Dillinger ties the doc up in a wheelchair and rolls him into a river. After a big bank robbery, the gang is cornered by cops in a cabin when Elaine announces she is pregnant and wants to give up the life of crime. Because this is called "Young" Dillinger, he ends the movie still on the run, though an ending crawl tells us most assuredly that crime never pays!

This black & white B-film was considered quite violent in its day, and the violence is still impressive, though it's not gory or graphic, two things that 1967's Bonnie and Clyde would be a couple of years later. The Warren Beatty movie might have taken at least some inspiration from this movie in terms of the way the narrative is laid out (two attractive messed-up rural-type kids who form a crime gang, rob banks, kill people, and make headlines). That's not to say this film is anywhere near the quality of Bonnie and Clyde, but it's better than its reputation might lead you to believe. Nick Adams, sometimes referred to as the poor man's James Dean—they were in Rebel Without a Cause together and became friends (and maybe more if you believe the gossip)---is fine as Dillinger, brash and perhaps too confident in his criminal talents. Unlike Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde, Adams never really comes off as sexy here, though Mary Ann Mobley, a former Miss America from Mississippi, certainly does. Robert Conrad (Floyd) and John Ashley (Baby Face Nelson) are plenty sexy, even if nothing is done with that energy—a three-way with Dillinger, Floyd, and Nelson would have spiced up the movie. Victor Buono has fun with his two short scenes as Hoffman and John Hoyt is a nicely slimy doctor. The low budget leaves us with drab sets, and is probably the reason that the movie does not have a 1920s feel at all; no period costumes or set decorations except for the cars. But cinematographer Stanley Cortez (Night of the Hunter, The Magnificent Ambersons) delivers some nice camera moves and angles in black & white widescreen. The script is also weak, giving us no background into anyone's character; we learn little more about Dillinger and Elaine than we knew while they were making out in the grass in the first scene. Certainly watchable, and possibly Nick Adams' best movie role; he’s better known for a 50s TV western series called The Rebel which was airing in reruns into the mid-60s. Pictured at left are Conrad and Adams. [TCM]