User reviews

Like all the other Crime Does Not Pay films I have seen, it begins with a fake public official addressing the audience. These folks were very convincing and are introduced as a judge or prosecutor or some other public official and you assume that's who they are since they are not listed in the credits, but MGM used actors in these roles!

This is the second film in the series that stars Tom Neal. Like the other one, he's a good guy out to stop crime--quite a bit different from his IMDb biography, by the way. He is a shopkeeper who is approached by a mobster and told he must place a slot machine in his business OR ELSE! Well, he's not having any part of it and goes to the police. However, and this is VERY unusual for the series, the town's political machine is corrupt and soon the mobster is released from custody. So, Neal does what any clear-thinking citizen would do--take on the mob all by himself! What's next? See the film.

This is a rather average film from the Crime Does Not Pay series--and this is NOT bad, as the films generally were well-acted and exciting and this one is no different. Not outstanding but still quite good.

This 20-minute film is one of an MGM short series called Crime Does Not Pay. "Jack Pot" is docu-drama about how social tolerance for small, seemingly harmless, illegal practices, can lead to major organized crime. The portrayals in this film indeed show how insidious the spread of crime can be. The culprit in this case is the illegal but seemingly harmless slot machine. The neighborhood drugstore has one, so does the laundry, etc.

The players are good in this film as the plot leads to local corruption and violent crime. An unidentified police chief introduces the film with a warning, "The greatest single menace to honest law enforcement is not sensational gangsterism or any other open lawlessness. It's public apathy." By accepting of petty illegal functions, the public provides a wedge for organized crime to move into in a town or city.

The case is well made in this public service type of short.

Jack Pot (1940)

*** (out of 4)

Part of MGM's "Crime Does Not Pay" series with this one looking at illegal gambling in the form of slot machines. This is yet another pretty good entry in the series, although this one here isn't among the best out there. There isn't as much drama this time out but the way the story is told keeps it interesting throughout.

Turner Classic Movies is the best place to catch these Crime Does Not Pay series as they usually show at least one a month. Some have been released to various Warner box sets as well.

Just watched this Crime Does Not Pay short from M-G-M on the I Love You Again DVD. This one concerns the illegal profit of slot machines displayed in various places where unsuspecting customers don't know how they're getting ripped off. An owner of a dry cleaning business, however, doesn't want one and gets in trouble as a result. I'll stop there and just say this was quite an interesting short, if not a very exciting one. Since there's no music score, silence is effectively used in some scenes. So on that note, Jack Pot is worth a look. P.S. Among the players is future Ward Cleaver from the TV show "Leave It To Beaver", Hugh Beaumont. He plays a mechanic.

This short starts out with something quite innocuous - slot machines - being installed in businesses around an unnamed city where a pro reform candidate has just won election. They are placed there by the head of a gambling syndicate afraid that his big gambling rackets will all be raided and taken down and he'll be left with nothing. So customers wander into a drug store and put a few nickels in the machine. Each machine will only make maybe a couple of dollars a day for the syndicate. But multiply that by 4000 machines and you have quite a haul in 1940 dollars.

The head of the gambling syndicate uses that cash to get into more violent rackets such as protection, paying expensive attorneys to defend his henchmen in court and get them out on bail. To personalize all of this, a young couple planning to marry and the young woman's father wind up as victims in the middle of this criminal activity.

The message is that even participating in small possibly quasi legal activities such as slot machines helps feed the organized crime machine. With Tom Neal as one of the good guys in one of several MGM shorts he made at the beginning of his career, and also an interesting example of mobile recording technology of the time helping crack the case.

Efficiently and spartanly made as all of the Crime Does Not Pay shorts were, there is lots of action in this one.

This episode of MGM's long-running crime series takes on the slot machine, informing us they're crooked, support racketeers and lead to no good, because CRIME DOES NOT PAY.

It's the third and last episode to feature Edwin Maxwell. He's a hefty, older actor, that seemed to be cast on those roles for which the producers couldn't afford Edward Arnold. Usually cast as a businessman, often a crooked one, or an authority figure, he appeared in one film in 1915, then back onto the stage until 1929. From then, he showed up in about 150 features and shorts. Although he occasionally received no credit after 1940, he worked steadily until his death in 1948.

It's another episode of MGM's Crime Does Not Pay series. The mayor is tackling illegal gambling. Mob boss Rocky Fallon has a mole in the mayor's office. He built his empire from gambling and has so much more.

Some of this is interesting. Some of it is weak. There is nothing weaker than a bad shooting victim. The girl getting acid thrown in the face is a pretty big move. It's almost modern. It's fine as one of these episodes, but it's probably trying to do too much. These shorts work best with a simplistic, straight-forward story. This feels like a story that needs to be expanded into full length.

It is ironic how the film opens with a formal fake message besmirching illegal gambling in the 1940's and how one storekeeper takes it upon himself to break up the crime syndicate and yet today there is not one stand alone state that does not fully support their state owned and operated lotteries that encourage tax payers to gamble on their state run lotteries.

I guess that is why we now have states such as Colorado and Illinois that have now legalized recreational marijuana. So instead of a movie called Jack Pot the government may soon be releasing a new short film praising the recreational use of their own Party Pot.

I give this outdated short film a 3 out of 10 IMDB rating mainly for the hypocrisy of the time which still holds true today some eighty (80) years later.

This was a very good extra on my 'I Love You Again' DVD, that was disc 4 of my 5-film 'TCM Spotlight: Myrna Loy and William Powell Collection', and part of the 'Crime Does Not Pay' series that I have quite enjoyed. In it, the police try to show that these seemingly-harmless slot machines that the mobs try to get legitimate business owners to own and install in their establishments are rigged and are the first step for these thugs, in cities, to bring crimes waves in. Rowland was one of the finer directors of these shorts, and eventually was able to make larger, better pictures (a personal favourite of mine is the first cinematic adaptation of Dr. Seuss' work, 'The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.'.

Very much worth a look if you enjoy crime films of the period!