While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Warner Brothers in 1939: Bogart on the way up, Kay Francis on the way out. They were bound to meet – a pity it wasn't a worthier vehicle than this "B"-grade crime melodrama! But I guess we need to be thankful for what we have. The story was late re-made as Hot Summer Night, but it is much more exciting in this original version. In fact, as a "B" feature, this movie is tops. It's also an excellent example of skillful "B" feature film-making. The script even managed to work in some Warner's social comment on the District Attorney's office. (The script alleges that although the D.A. hasn't a hope of winning the case, he puts the Kay Francis character on trial anyway to appease an action-demanding public). The ethics of the medical profession are also criticized. Lewis Seiler directs at a crackerjack pace. The film has plenty of action and even some occasional glimpses of style (e.g. the Bogart springing his boys from prison sequence with its rapid tracking shots of feet). As we might expect, Bogart has tremendous presence and delivers his usual noteworthy performance. Some attempts to inject a bit of comedy relief with Eddie Foy (one of Bogie's henchmen) ring a little false, but Bogart manages to shortchange any shortcomings. On the other hand, Miss Francis is not quite right. She seems to often play with less stamina than the role demands. On the other hand, James Stephenson, as usual, is very able, while John Eldredge is appropriately and intentionally weak.

I wonder if the screenwriter for this film had somebody in mind as a model for the criminal Humphrey Bogart plays. In the 1920s and 1930s there was a major war between Joe Masseria and Salvator Marranzano for control of New York's criminal underworld. Marranzano, on the surface, seemed more modern to the younger crowd of gangsters like Luciano, Costello, Siegel, Lansky, and Lepke, and they helped him get rid of the "Mustache Petes" or old style gangsters supporting Masseria (and eventually Masseria himself). But they found that rather than restructuring the criminal world into a model corporate structure, Marranzano had delusions of grandeur. He was intoxicated by the image and memory of Gaius Julius Caesar, and intended to make himself the Caesar of the New York Underworld. Eventually "Caesar" Marranzano was bumped off by the disgruntled young Turks who did not plan for him to be a "Capo di Capo".Interestingly enough he was stabbed to death in his office - one wonders if Luciano and the others purposely copied Caesar's demise in the forum. In this remake of an early Paul Muni film, DR. SOCRATES, Kay Francis is a female doctor who discovers that her late husband was tied to a powerful mobster (Bogart) and got killed helping him with some medical attention for one of his gang. The police and A.D.A. (Pierre Watkins) arrest and try Francis on really weak grounds as an accomplice, but the jury is deadlocked and she is released while the A.D.A. decides whether or not to retry her. Francis is determined to prove her innocence by catching Bogart.Humphrey Bogart played many gangsters in the 1930s, and most of them were quite dangerous types, like Duke Mantee in THE PETRIFIED FOREST or Baby Face Martin in DEAD END. But his gangster boss here is ridiculous. The reason is that the screenwriter created a personality point about this gangster that is never pursued properly in the film. Bogart is enamored by the career of Napoleon Bonaparte, and keeps mentioning this. Never once in the course of the film, outside an occasional reference to say Waterloo or some incident like that, do we see Bogie trying to use Napoleons aphorisms and strategies in his crimes! For example, Bonaparte once dismissed military brilliance and said something to the effect that he preferred "lucky" generals to brilliant ones. He realized that a brilliant general could get so hung up about his own brilliant schemes that he could blow a major battle, whereas a "lucky" general looks quickly at a situation and grabs the initiative. Bogart does not show any inclination to follow that particular piece of wisdom, and does not even mention it.Bogart also is never shown using any of the strategies that made Marengo or Austerlitz or Jena victories that rang down through the last two centuries in his robbery schemes or crimes. For a man who supposedly admires a great figure he doesn't seem willing to learn from him!In the plot Francis hides in a small town and Bogart shows up there to rescue two of his men from the local police (actually similar to an incident involving gangster John Dillinger). Bogart has also picked up a traveling writer (James Stephenson) who he realizes can ghost write Bogies criminal memoirs. Stephenson is arrested in the incident, but he is released into Francis' custody (she is now a doctor in the town), and subsequently kidnapped by Bogie (not quite like the unfortunate Duc de Enghien). Soon Francis is in pursuit, and notes Bogies health as a potential key to undermining his control of her fate and Stephenson's. It involves giving him a peculiar drug that has to be also given to all his men at the same time to disable them all. This part of the script is absolutely unbelievable as Bogie's gangster does not accept the simple solution of selecting one of his men as a guinea pig to test the drug on (Francis manages to browbeat him into taking the drug!).There are elements of other, better films in KING OF THE UNDERWORLD. Most notable is James Stephenson's writer/hobo who resembles Leslie Howard's in THE PETRIFIED FOREST. The acting is pretty good (best are the scenes involving the local bigwig doctor who resents the arrival of Francis in the small town, and starts making problems for her). Stephenson was a fine young actor, whose best role (the troubled barrister defending Bette Davis' "Leslie Crosby" in THE LETTER) was yet to come, and his death in the early 1940s was a true loss to movies. Francis does nicely in her role, even if her victory over Bogie is asinine. Bogie is good - wish I could say the same for his character or the script.

Although Humphrey Bogart got star billing in King Of The Underworld, I'm willing to bet he didn't thank Jack Warner for it. In fact this film was one hollow crown.King of the Underworld was supposedly a remake of the Paul Muni film, Dr. Socrates, but given Humphrey Bogart was in the cast, the character is written more like Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest. He even has an English writer along in the person of James Stephenson.Kay Francis and John Eldredge are a pair of married doctors and Eldredge pulls off a tricky bit of surgery on one of Bogart's henchmen. Bogey's a man who appreciates good work done on his behalf and gives Eldredge $500.00 and there's more where that came from if he plays his cards right. Eldredge who has a gambling problem sees a good way to get some undeclared income. But when he's killed in a raid on the gang's hideout, Francis is also thought to be involved by the law and the American Medical Association no matter how much she protests her innocence. It's no good and she and her aunt Jessie Busley move to a small town to get away from the notoriety.Of course the notoriety and Bogart and an itinerant Leslie Howard like writer in Stephenson all meet up with her again. But Kay is plucky and resourceful to say the least.Bogart's character was ridiculous, no wonder the poor guy was screaming for better parts. He's a gangster who both shoots down people without mercy and gives his henchmen hotfoots just for laughs. He's concerned about his image and therefore kidnaps writer Stephenson to ghost write his autobiography and of course confesses enough to burn him in all 48 states. And then let's Kay Francis completely outsmart him, hard to believe he was king of anything.Definitely one of the lesser works for either of the stars.

In this theatrical melodrama Humphrey plays a gangster; amazing stretch of the imagination, isn't it? A semi-literate, Bogie (bad guy Joe Gurney) idolizes Napoleon (short guy ego tripper) and quotes le petit emperor on occasion to justify his own actions, such as placing chunks of lead into the physiques of various inconvenient people with the assistance of gunpowder. He utilizes this method of employee reduction to lay off (without benefits) his doctor, who's wife, Kay Francis (Dr. Carole Nelson), who has just won the Isabella Rossellini look-a-like contest, is also a doctor. She scrams Big City to settle down in a small town to start over, and prove her innocence on a charge of consorting with known actors who play criminals. This is considered highly unprofessional by other doctors, who sent in notes of complaint from the golf course.Well, wonders never cease as Bogie and his gang show up coincidentally and quite by chance in that very exact identical same town! Of all the burgs in all the world, why did they have to drive into this one? Additionally, the gang has picked up a hitch-hiking writer (James Stephenson) who has become Bogie's biographer, not entirely of his own volition. Nefarious doings evolve, love blossoms, lots of action and shooting, police persons with tommy-guns are attracted; and maybe, just maybe the gangster wins in a 1930's era movie, by special dispensation of the Hayes Office. Or maybe not. Jeepers, the suspense is killing you, so don't miss this movie if you get a chance! Just remember, the criminals are the ones who use poor grammar and have a tendency to fall down with holes in their bodies. Bogie proves adept at utilizing the vernacular popular amongst persons criminally inclined, as usual. And, I don't mind telling you that there is a modicum of suspense as the fair doctorette bravely faces adversaries on both sides of the law. I actually bit a fingernail. I give this one gun up with a lot of bullets. Hey, it's watchable and it's got Bogie! Xoxox Mike