The Beast of the City 10/28/25

Is this the most violent crime film of the pre-Code era?  It takes an extreme Law ‘n’ Order position, one that downplays the need for Civil Rights while glamorizing brute vigilantism. Police chief Walter Huston takes the law into his own hands, while his detective brother Wallace Ford screws things up by getting all warm and fuzzy with the seductive gun moll Jean Harlow. As the old song goes, it all ends in gunsmoke and mincemeat — like, 45 cops and crooks dead in a pool of blood, man!  Nothing like it recurred in Hollywood until the mid-1960s. On Blu-ray from The Warner Archive Collection.
10/28/25