King of the Underworld (1939)

King of the Underworld (1939)

  • 6.4
  • 69 mins
  • Crime, Drama

Storyline

Niles and Carole Nelson are married doctors who save one of gang lord Gurney's men. Gurney exploits them, then kills Niles leaving Carole to take the fall. He next kidnaps writer Bill Stephens to write his biography. Knowing Bill will be killed when the biography is finished, Carole takes matters into her own hands.—Ed Stephan



Short Review

Impoverished husband-and-wife surgeons, and an impoverished author, get caught up in organized crime. But they're all caught up in and impoverished by the crude characterizations in this movie. Strangely, although organized crime is the cause of their escape from poverty, it's portrayed very unsympathetically and easily outsmarted. Organized crime here is nothing but a means used to achieve bourgeois success (though not for the gangsters). But what was the cause of their failure to be successfully bourgeois, the cause of their impoverishment, in the first place?


Trailer