Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way but I don't think the Secret Six had very much to do with the story. Quite late in the picture the masked tribunal is introduced as the greatest force for law and order in the country, formed to go up against the power of gangsters run amok. Once they come on the scene though they're gone just as quickly. Oh well, the title sounded cool anyway.
For all it's inconsistencies and outright gaffes though, this was a pretty entertaining picture. An opening scene shows 'Slaughterhouse' Scorpio (Wallace Beery) plying his trade by using a sledgehammer, presumably to whack a side of beef to death. Shortly after, he's shown leaving the plant with one of his buddies, and they're both dressed in suits and ties! Think about that one for a minute.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but the way Scorpio made his way up the ranks of the mob world seemed pretty peculiar to me, especially since his IQ seemed to place him at the lower end of the scale. I cracked up when he took out gang member Johnny Franks (Ralph Bellamy) with a burst of machine gun fire and when the camera panned back to him he was holding a revolver! Better yet, when reporter Hank Rogers (Johnny Mack Brown) filed his story with The Tribune, he stated that Franks had three bullets in his back. How did he know?
Say, did you catch the signage at Franks Steak House after Scorpio took over - 'Eighteenth Amendment Strictly Observed"! Just like a bootlegger to flaunt his support of Prohibition. I wouldn't have minded trying his twenty five cent chili though, I bet it was pretty good.
Well forget about the screwball stuff for a minute, this film has a cast list that would be the envy of most films of the era. Besides those already mentioned you have Lewis Stone, Jean Harlow, and Clark Gable, and they're just some of the supporting players. This might be the earliest picture I've seen Clark Gable in and it was uncanny how much he resembled a young George Clooney - check it out. Or if you're watching a Clooney flick, maybe he looks like a young Clark Gable - it works both ways.
As an early gangster flick, this MGM picture doesn't quite measure up to the ones Warner Brothers put out the same year 1931 - "Little Caesar" and "The Public Enemy", but I'd still recommend a viewing to see all the principals at work. You have to see the look on Scorpio's face when he knows he'll get the chair for his misdeeds, it's enough to write Grandma and Aunt Emma home about.
For all it's inconsistencies and outright gaffes though, this was a pretty entertaining picture. An opening scene shows 'Slaughterhouse' Scorpio (Wallace Beery) plying his trade by using a sledgehammer, presumably to whack a side of beef to death. Shortly after, he's shown leaving the plant with one of his buddies, and they're both dressed in suits and ties! Think about that one for a minute.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but the way Scorpio made his way up the ranks of the mob world seemed pretty peculiar to me, especially since his IQ seemed to place him at the lower end of the scale. I cracked up when he took out gang member Johnny Franks (Ralph Bellamy) with a burst of machine gun fire and when the camera panned back to him he was holding a revolver! Better yet, when reporter Hank Rogers (Johnny Mack Brown) filed his story with The Tribune, he stated that Franks had three bullets in his back. How did he know?
Say, did you catch the signage at Franks Steak House after Scorpio took over - 'Eighteenth Amendment Strictly Observed"! Just like a bootlegger to flaunt his support of Prohibition. I wouldn't have minded trying his twenty five cent chili though, I bet it was pretty good.
Well forget about the screwball stuff for a minute, this film has a cast list that would be the envy of most films of the era. Besides those already mentioned you have Lewis Stone, Jean Harlow, and Clark Gable, and they're just some of the supporting players. This might be the earliest picture I've seen Clark Gable in and it was uncanny how much he resembled a young George Clooney - check it out. Or if you're watching a Clooney flick, maybe he looks like a young Clark Gable - it works both ways.
As an early gangster flick, this MGM picture doesn't quite measure up to the ones Warner Brothers put out the same year 1931 - "Little Caesar" and "The Public Enemy", but I'd still recommend a viewing to see all the principals at work. You have to see the look on Scorpio's face when he knows he'll get the chair for his misdeeds, it's enough to write Grandma and Aunt Emma home about.