Search
What's Hot
Day-by-Day Fall Schedule
Celebs With Their Pets
Shows We Lost This Season
Idol Runner-Up Takes Pay Cut?

King Of The Underworld

1939, Movie, NR, 69 mins

King Of The Underworld: Review

starstarstarstar
This remake of 1935's DR. SOCRATES tries a different angle in changing the sex of the lead character, casting Kay Francis in Paul Muni's role. Francis and her husband, Eldredge, are both celebrated surgeons at County Hospital. Eldredge, however, has a weakness for gambling and accepts a high-paying offer from gangster Bogart to act as his gang's doctor. Francis is kept in the dark about her husband's underworld involvement and, one night, follows him to Bogart's hideout, to which he has been called to patch up a henchman's wounds. The police arrive and Bogart, thinking that he's been squealed on, kills Eldredge. Francis witnesses the bloodletting and is arrested, while Bogart and his boys make a fast getaway. Although Francis is acquitted, her future at County Hospital is ruined and she nearly loses her license to practice. Francis, however, is a determined woman. She begins her search for the men who killed her husband and winds up in a small town where two of the gang members are jailed. She opens a small practice and meets novelist Stephenson (who has been hired by Bogart, in a moment of Napoleonic weakness, to pen his biography). She convinces the writer that he will be killed by Bogart as soon as the book is completed. Stephenson heeds Francis' warning and agrees to help bring about the gang's demise. Meantime, Bogart engineers the jailbreak of his two men and is wounded, necessitating Francis' medical assistance. She ingeniously infects Bogart's wound and then proceeds to blind him and his entire gang with an eyedrop solution, under the guise that she is preventing infection. In the film's finest sequence, the blinded Bogart wakes up to the ruse and stumbles helplessly through a number of rooms in the hopes of killing Francis and Stephenson. The police burst onto the scene and fell Bogart in a flurry of bullets. Originally conceived as a vehicle for the waning Francis, KING OF THE UNDERWORLD soon began falling apart at the seams. The film was not, as the ad-mats promised, "The Scorching Story of Gangdom's Last Stand!" Seiler's direction lacked intensity and the project was temporarily shelved. Additional scenes were added and the film was finally released, but with Bogart top-billed and Francis demoted. Seizing yet another opportunity to kick Francis while she was down, Warner Bros. placed her name below the title and at half the size of Bogart's. While the film is entertaining, it lacks the verve of Bogart's better vehicles. After viewing the film, Noel Coward confronted Bogart with the pointed question, "Have you and Jack Warner no shame?" Bogart retorted, "None." leave a comment
Are You Watching?
King Of The Underworld
Loading ...
Advertisement

Our Partners

Advertisement

Related Websites

You might be also interested in the following websites:

Most Popular TV Shows

  1. American Idol
  2. NCIS
  3. Big Bang Theory
  4. Voice
  5. Person of Interest
more popular tv shows

Most Popular Celebrities

  1. Jessica Simpson
  2. Khloe Kardashian
  3. Kate Middleton
  4. Maria Menounos
  5. Kim Kardashian
more popular celebrities

Most Popular Movies

  1. Men In Black 3
  2. Avengers
  3. Battleship
  4. The Dictator
  5. Dark Shadows
more popular movies

Top Videos

  1. Revenge
  2. The Bachelorette
  3. Keeping Up With the Kardashian...
  4. The Bachelorette
  5. The Bachelorette
more top videos