Machine Gun Kelly is a change of pace from Roger Corman's more common 1950s output of cheap monster movies. It has an intelligent script, lean muscular direction from Roger Corman, and a brooding early performance from Charles Bronson.
Bronson plays George "Machine Gun" Kelly, a bank robber with two major obsessions - death, and a particular type of firearm. After a particularly successful job, Kelly is now Public Enemy Number One. Tensions grow in his gang, especially his partner in crime Flo Becker (Susan Cabot), who starts to question if he is a real man.
The screenplay uses Freudian elements to create a title character who is more than one dimensional. Kelly is infantilised by everyone around him. He has a fear of death that is repeatedly triggered by symbols that he sees. And he is a snivelling coward once deprived of his phallic machine gun. As well as making for interesting characterisation, this approach allows Corman to refute accusations that he is glorifying criminals.
Corman's directorial stylistic high point would come later, with his rich and surreal adaptions of several Edgar Allan Poe stories. Here, he shows the versatility and good taste to know that what he needs to do is to keep things focussed and moving. However, there are some great stylistic choices, such as the wordless opening sequence, showing a violent bank robbery that ends in the death of a security guard.
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