Forties Gangster Films

Dr. Sovac transplants the brain of a gangster into his professor friend's body to save his life, but there is a side effect that causes a dangerous split personality.

After retired racket boss John Sarto tries to reclaim his place and his former friends try to kill him, he finds solace in a monastery and reinvents himself as a pious monk.

Danny is a content truck driver, but his girl Peggy shows potential as a dancer and hopes he too can show ambition. Danny acquiesces and pursues boxing to please her, but the two begin to spend more time working than time together.

Texas girl (Bari) goes to New York, becomes a newspaper reporter, and tries to get her gambler boyfriend (Woods) to come home.

A bootlegger-turned-legal distiller learns he's inherited an English title. He travels to England with a revenge-seeking ex-convict he once betrayed, leaving his business vulnerable while exploring his newfound nobility.

After crooked nightclub owner Chips Maguire murders a police informant, he blackmails his piano player to allow him to stay at his eccentric mother's boarding house.

The son of a jailed Wall Street broker turns to crime to pay for his father's release.

In despair after breaking up with his girlfriend, a man hires a thug he has never seen to kill him. However, he changes his mind when he falls in love with another woman--but he can't stop the man trying to kill him because he doesn't know who he is.

A DA quits after wrongly convicting an innocent man. His secretary joins his new law firm, which prospers through mob ties. His brother John joins but discovers corruption and helps the feds, leading to his own false murder conviction.

Mobster Ma Webster rules her clan with an iron hand, taking charge of all their robberies despite the protests of George Frost, the only member of her gang who is not her son. On Christmas Eve, Ma, George, and her sons Eddie, Charlie, and Tom, rob the Centre City bank, but are warned to get out of town by her other son Bert, who disdains their criminal activity and is studying to be a lawyer. Ma and the gang go on a crime spree across the states, receiving $300,000 in ransom for kidnapping, and additional cash from various robberies. Aware that the serial numbers on the ransom money have been recorded by federal agents, they arrange with fellow crook Pan to trade the money $100,000 in unmarked bills, but take the bills and kill him instead, They are unaware, however, that the police have found a list of the serial numbers for all Pan's bills in his coat pocket. Federal agents Scott Langham and Ross Waring are put on the case, and trace the Websters to a Southern town, where Ma is posing as a socialite. The Websters elude the police, but are forced to live meagerly while hiding out in cheap hotels. By the next Christmas, Ma returns to Centre City to visit Bert's baby boy. While she is out, her boys hold up a store, but Charlie is killed and Tom is arrested. Bert represents Tom at his extradition trial, and convinces him to plead guilty and return willingly to the city of the kidnapping. When George wants to go his own way, Ma and Eddie kill him, then hire Stitch Torey to get Tom away from the police. Their attempt fails, however, and most of Torey's gang perish. After a year, Ma and Eddie have developed a low profile while Eddie works at a cannery to support them, and Ma becomes neighborly. Unknown to Ma, Eddie arranges a hideout for some robbers he hopes to join up with and gives them a case of canned food, but the criminals' car crashes and the police get Eddie's fingerprints from the cans. On Christmas Eve, federal agents attempt to arrest Ma and Eddie, who respond with gunfire. In the hail of bullets, Eddie is killed and Ma is finally arrested.

A group of professors working on a new encyclopedia while living in a Manhattan mansion take in a mouthy nightclub singer who is wanted by the police to help bring down her mob boss lover.

A detective (Roger Pryor) courts a gangster's (Anthony Quinn) ex-wife (Joan Perry) to lure him into a trap.

Gangster Frank Dillon abducts Dr. Steven Bishop to treat wounded Joe Madison. Dillon also takes Joe's nurse sister. Dillon threatens Bishop's life if Joe dies, but Bishop knows Dillon will kill him anyway.

With the gang business washed up, Rickey Deane, suave first lieutenant to racketeer Chink Moran, and Louie Lanzer, a has-been fighter with itchy fingers, decide to take a peaceful vacation in the country. They are followed by three hard-boiled characters, Fingers, Ziggy and Crusher. Ricky, thinking they are to be rubbed out for deserting Chink, who has been drafted into the Army, stops his car and confronts them. But they merely want to ask Ricky to be their new boss. He declines but promises to call them sometime if the need arises. They are speeding through a Connecticut village and are stopped by yokel Constable Sam Smedley. Judge Paradise, with his daughter Virginia as court clerk, fines them $5.00 each, plus $37 costs - or 30 days in jail. They, while waiting to hear from Jimmy's lawyer, are taken to the cells and are amazed to find the tumbledown jail wide open, with prisoners walking in and out. The door won't lock. The judge explains to Jimmy that Middle Village is unincorporated and broke, its sole income being traffic fines. The town's bonds, for everything from the houses to the village pump, are owned in New York. He also adds that anyone in jail in an unincorporated village is safe from the outside law - Federal,State and City. Ricky, fine paid, hustles back to New York and buys the town bonds for $40,000. Back in Middle Village, Ricky starts the ball rolling; he retains Judge Paradise, sends for Fingers, Ziggy and Crusher, and renovates the jail into a luxurious club. His lawyer then starts a stream of "customers on the lam" who pay $1000 a week for the comfort and protection of the Middle Village Jail. New fire chief Crusher, police chief Ziggy and the others board with Henrietta, a maiden lady with aspirations of becoming a gun moll. She also startles them with her collection of wanted posters, their pictures among them. Louie and Henrietta fall for each other. Virginia, in love with Ricky, tries to talk him into doing big things for the town, such as reopening its one-and-only factory. Ricky agrees when the Army offers a defense contract for shell casings. Meanwhile, Chink has gotten out of the Army and buys Louie's half interest in Middle Village. He tells the "boys" they are suckers for letting Ricky spend the jail "take" on civic improvements and he plans to wreck the factory deal.

A small-town attorney comes to the city to investigate the murder of a friend and falls in love with the daughter of the head of the crime ring he hopes to expose.

Kids look to get revenge when their fathers are all killed in a mob war.

Two troublesome boys grow into very different men, one becoming a hoodlum and the other embracing college, but both are in love with the same girl.

After being released from prison, notorious thief Roy Earle is hired by his old boss to help a group of inexperienced criminals plan and carry out the robbery of a California resort.

Lieutenant Bill Mason (Dennis O'Keefe) pursues a Chicago gang to New York City, unaware that its scar-cheeked leader, Slade (Dame Judith Anderson), is a woman.

A young street kid idolizes his brother, a gangster who was sent to death row for murder. Frank, a local cop, tries to ensure that the boy and his gang don't wind up the same way as his brother, and enrolls them in a recreational program and gets them jobs. All seems to go well until the dead gangster's brother finds out that the cop who arrested his brother for murder, which resulted in his being executed, was Frank.

The son of a murderer is entangled in his father's crimes and is sentenced to a rehabilitive farm, where he learns a new way of life.

A detective begins to suspect that a man may be in prison for a crime he didn't commit.

In a pre-arranged set-up, a cop strikes his police-chief, is fired and infiltrates the mob but when the police-chief is murdered, the ex-cop is unable to prove his innocence and is left-out in the cold, on the wrong side of the law.

Robin Hoodish gangster in 1929 Chicago is an object of affection, kind to New York hood and bad to a bad crook.

Runyonesque Broadway gamblers turn patriotic when they stumble onto a cell of Nazi saboteurs.