Review: St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

Docudrama outlining the famed 1929 gangland shootings in Chicago, centring on the important players like Al Capone (Jason Robards), rival George ‘Bugs’ Moran (Ralph Meeker), and Moran’s chief lieutenant Peter Gusenberg (George Segal). Joe Turkel and Harold J. Stone (the latter playing Frank Nitti) are Capone’s top aides and wise counsel. Frank Silvera plays Sorello, an elderly immigrant trucker in need of cash who gets slapped around by Segal and co, but is covertly working for Capone’s crew as a decoy. Bruce Dern has a small role as a mechanic who is a victim of the massacre, whilst a young Jack Nicholson plays one of the gunmen, as does Corman regular Dick Miller. Alex D’Arcy plays the dapper turncoat Joey Aiello, envisioned by Moran as Capone’s successor. Aiello arranges for Capone friend and mafia don Patsy Lolordo’s killing, sealing his fate. Clint Ritchie plays “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn, Capone’s chief lieutenant who masterminds the plot involving Sorello.

1967 Roger Corman (The infamous B-movie producer occasional director, notable for his Edgar Allen Poe cycle of films, and his penny-pinching) docudrama-like film was one of his few big studio ventures, and sorry Roger, but you blew it big-time. The film’s narration-heavy, docudrama approach is a fatal error that renders the whole film well-meaning and handsomely mounted, but staggeringly ineffectual and dull. None of the characters are fleshed out, the narration takes away any juice from scenes (and makes it disjointed and episodic), and few of the actors can do a damn thing to salvage this mess. Corman’s approach (which isn’t even consistent, by the way) is counter-active to any entertainment value whatsoever, despite a whole lot of familiar names and faces in the cast. Why cast so many recognisable people and then misuse them in such a clinical, detached narrative? Every time one of the actors looks like they’re about to get a moment to shine, in comes Paul Frees’ best Orson Welles imitation to tell us who and what we’re seeing. Shut up and let me watch, you frigging know-it-all, you’re destroying the flow of the scene and making the audience passive to the point of well, pointlessness.

Jason Robards (in a role apparently originally intended for Orson Welles, funnily enough) doesn’t look even remotely like Capone (or remotely Italian for that matter), despite a scar on his face, and only has a few moments of interest in a pretty clichéd characterisation. He makes Capone look like a hollow windbag, not terribly forceful, just a boring showboat fond of bloviating. Even worse is George Segal as Peter Gusenberg, who comes across as too comical and not even remotely threatening. He’s doing a Cagney imitation by way of Don Rickles and the effect is awful. Maybe Segal misunderstood the connotation of the word ‘wiseguy’ in this instance and thought he was meant to be yukking it up on screen. Character actor Ralph Meeker makes for an excellent Bugs Moran, however, and spotting the ‘Corman alumni’ cameo provides a bit of fun, especially a young Nicholson with the worst Italian mobster voice you’ve ever heard.

There are moments, and the production design is amazingly opulent for a Corman film, but it has no life to it. A massive disappointment proving perhaps that Corman really was at his best as an independent. Screenplay by Howard Browne (“Capone” and countless episodes of TV shows like “Maverick”) is apparently quite accurate to history, especially for the time the film was made. Unfortunately, it’s such a complex, labyrinthine story that perhaps a little more dramatic license could’ve been beneficial to audience comprehension and enjoyment. But hey, at least Corman brought the film in under budget, despite looking much more expensive than its $1.5 million budget would suggest. In that regard, Corman was without peer, but you can find much better examples of that (“The Pit and the Pendulum”, “Tomb of Ligeia”, and “The Fall of the House of Usher” especially) than this deadly dull affair. Points go to Meeker and the production design. Otherwise a failure and crushing disappointment.

Rating: C