Guns Don't Argue

Apparently re-cut episodes from the Gangbusters TV show on the big screen. While this was frequently done in the 50's and 60's because people didn't have a TV or a color TV and producers wanted an increased return on their investment (big screen ticket sales or if it went to the small screen resale of a series that isn't in syndication), the results were usually less then the sum of their parts. The only time I've ever seen it work were where multi-part stories were put together (Ala Rocky Jones or Man From Uncle) or in the case of horror anthology (The Veil and 13 Demon Street). Here the effect is to have stories of American criminals in the 20's and 30's (Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, etc)inter-cut with each other as a narrator talks about how the FBI hunted them down. Its a weird concoction that doesn't quite work because its clear that there are things here that don't belong together. More than once I looked at the TV oddly because things didn't seem right. In fairness I won't describe the cheapness of the production since this was what early TV (and the series) was like. Its not bad, but its not very good either. To be perfectly honest the episodes of the series that I've seen work better a single episodes where we're not expecting as much. Given the choice I'd rent dvds of the show instead of this movie.