Mad Dog Coll

Film debut of Gene Hackman.

When Vincent Coll was killed, he was using a phone booth in the London Chemists drug store at Eighth Avenue and 23rd Street. He was reportedly talking to Owney Madden, who kept Coll on the line while the call could be traced. Soon enough, a limousine pulled up outside. While Bo Weinberg waited behind the wheel, Leonard Scarnici and Anthony Fabrizzo stepped out. One of them waited outside and the other walked inside. After telling the cashier to "Keep cool, now", the killer withdrew a Thompson submachine gun from under his overcoat and went back to the phone booth where Coll was. The gunman opened fire, raking up one side of the glass booth and down the other. A total of fifteen bullets were dug out of Vincent Coll's body at the morgue; even more may have passed clean through him. The killers were chased unsuccessfully up Eighth Avenue by a detective squad that had pulled up just after Coll was killed. (For some reason, the film instead shows the police trapping and killing Coll in the phone booth after he fires at them with a Tommy Gun.)

Featured in Best in Action: 1961 (2018)