CRIME IN THE STREETS (1956)

Ohhhh brother! This movie is so dated and naive that I'm curious if anybody ever took it seriously? The opening scene has two street gangs (the Hornets and the Dukes) squaring off for a rumble, they fight and despite the fact that most everybody has a weapon (one dude even has a board with a giant nail in it!) nobody gets hurt outside of a few bumps and scratches. Next up, the Hornets kidnaps a Duke member and beat his ass in an alley. The gang leader's upstairs neighbor sees one kid pull a zip gun on the hostage and calls the police. He's arrested, so the Hornets decide to get revenge by killing the rat. The rest of the movie is the slow-boil build up to the appointed time for the murder.

CITS is so cheesy that it could have easily been a Christian movie.  All you needed was for the social worker guy say "Jesus loves you." every once and a while.  When I saw director Don (DIRTY HARRY) Siegel's name on the credits I had high hopes that this film would rock, since he did PRIVATE HELL 36 just two years earlier and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS the same year, but no such luck. The entire movie was obviously shot on a sound stage and might have even been made for television, it sure looks like it was. I think Siegel was just cashing a pay check on this one. And that leads us to the acting...it's actually pretty good, even though the teenage gang leader was played by 27-year-old John Cassavetes.

If you like old juvenile delinquent films where the "bad guys" are such giant dorks it's almost painful to watch then CRIME IN THE STREETS is for you.  Good for a laugh only.  Skip it.

RIOT IN CELL BLOCK 11 (1954)

[Update 10/31/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

Just a year after STALAG 17, Neville Brand finds himself back in prison. This time he's in a large state prison and he's had enough of the overcrowding, bad food and the abusive guards so he leads a riot and ends up capturing nine guards. He and his fellow convicts threaten to kill the guards unless some of their demands are met. Lots of tense situations and violence follows.

For 1954 this movie was pretty hard-hitting and violent and even had one direct reference to male-on-male prison rape! Director Don Siegel also helmed PRIVATE HELL 36, ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ and DIRTY HARRY.

PRIVATE HELL 36 (1954)

Tightly-packed crime drama about a man in NYC who's murdered and robbed of $300,000. A year later, some of the bills start showing up in Los Angeles. Detectives Bruner and Farnum are assigned to follow the money trail. It leads to lounge singer Ida Lupino (THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT, HIGH SIERRA) and eventually to tension and backstabbing between the two partners when they steal $80k of the money.

It might not be action-packed, but PRIVATE HELL 36 is still a great film noir. The acting is top-notch. The story is interesting and hard-boiled. The direction by Don Siegel - who'd later go on to direct four Clint Eastwood flicks- is excellent with numerous scenes shot on city streets and a horse track (I loved watching the crowd and seeing the old cars).

Any fan of classic film noir and older crime movies should have this in their collection.  Would be a great double feature with ARMORED CAR ROBBERY.