The Music Box Kid (1960)

Director: Edward L. Cahn

Writer: Herbert Abbott Spiro

Composer: Paul Sawtell, Bert Shefter

Starring: Ron Foster, Luana Patten, Grant Richards, Johnny Seven, Carl Milletaire, Dayton Lummis, Bernard Fein

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The hood who launched Murder, Inc!

Plot: A young gangster in 1920's New York quickly rises through the ranks of the mob, then sets up his own murder-for-hire organization. When he starts kidnapping other mobsters for ransom, the New York gangs band together for revenge.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? Nah.

I've been on an old crime movie kick lately and Netflix streaming has got them in spades.  I'm picking out titles I haven't seen or aren't familiar with in the hopes of finding one of those 'gems', the kind of thing that drives people like me to sift through shit looking for pearls, films that I can then turn onto other people and make the world a better place.  I'll be expecting my Nobel Peace Prize any time now.  This flick isn't that bad.  It looks and feels like it was made twenty years earlier and possibly because it's over fifty years old, it's got that certain charm and innocence that you'd find in those pictures.  The innocence in that this story couldn't possibly happen.  I mean really.  Larry (Ron Foster) is an enforcer for the mob in New York and decides to hire him and his men out per job instead of one (of five controlling mob families) of them just keeping him on the payroll as a full time employee.  It doesn't make any sense because sometimes one family is going to want someone in any of the other four dead.  That's a conflict of interest for Larry.  What's more, he starts kidnapping key leaders in the families for large ransoms?  Do you really think any of them would sit still for that?  Well, they don't but it takes them a long ass time to get around to doing something about it.  On this level, it's kind of fun and silly.  In the end, though, it's worth watching even if it's by no means a classic.  Oh, fans of FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! (1965) will recognize the main them as it appears in Russ Meyer's film, too.  It's a fun action cue but THE MUSIC BOX KID uses it way too much and it wears out its welcome much too soon.