Mad Dog Coll

This is Gene Hackman's first movie role! He is uncredited as a cop opposite Telly Savalas in one scene. Blink and you'll miss it! The beginning of a brilliant career that went unnoticed in this snootier!

Didn't know about Jerry Orbach was in this film, now I wish it would be played on Turner Classic or some place on local cable so we don't have to shell out God knows how much money for a crappy DVD!

Finally, how much more do I have to write about this movie that I haven't seen this is a stupid process here as far as a commentary. This is stupid. Fix this minimum of 10 lines of text nonsense!!! Jeepers!

Okay, this is the 10th line already, sorry folks?

The opening scene before the credits run, and the outrageous title song, set the tone for this over-the-top movie. In this movie, the Prohibition-Era Gangster is transformed into a 1950's juvenile delinquent punk. Imagine "The Roaring 20s" by way of "Rebel Without A Cause". It's great to see Vincent Gardenia, Telly Savalas and Jerry Orbach early in their careers. Nevertheless it's John Davis Chandler's over-the-top performance, in his only starring role, that really dominates this movie.

Chandler is one of those character actors who's names you probably wouldn't recognize, but who's face you can never forget. He used to specialize in portraying nasty, sneering, sadistic little punks; a role which he gets to play to the hilt in this movie. Chandler's version of Coll is a paranoid-psychotic juvenile delinquent who never got over being abused by his bullying father. Armed with a machine gun and supported by only a couple of henchmen, he attempts to move in on the powerful Dutch Shultz Mob in 1920s New York. Shultz is portrayed as a vicious mobster, but also a successful organized crime boss. Coll, on the other hand, is portrayed as a vicious loose-cannon who likes hurting people because he was bullied as a kid, and he thinks that hurting others is the only way to be a man.

Those who enjoyed Al Pacino's performance in "Scarface" would love this film as an equally over-the-top crime drama. The principal difference is that the one is a big-budget film with "A-List" cast and production values, while the other is a low-budget sleeper that came and went under-the radar.

John Chandler would have made a great Joker with his toothy, sneering smile, sniveling voice and angular facial features. I don't know how Cesar Romero was cast for the Batman show on ABC or if they had other actors also on their list. While Cesar was jovial and circus clowny, Chandler would have been creepier, horrifying and too reptilian for the little TV viewers. His Mad Dog is depicted as a woman abuser and rapist. What I liked about this film was the gritty, grimey, sleazy depiction of gangsters as psychopaths and the gold digging women who orbit around them. While Martin Scorsese has built a film career idolizing and romantizing Mafia scum in glossy films, this film zeros in on their repulsive inhumanity.

As any movie buff knows, the early sixties was the period for gangster biographies, mafia films such as MURDER INC, PORTRAIT OF A MOBSTER, RISE AND FALL OF LEGS DIAMOND, PAY OR DIE, THE BLACK HAND, KING OF THE ROARING TWENTIES, GEORGE RAFT STORY, THE PURPLE GANG.... And of course this one. Useless to say that John Davis Chandler gives here his best performance as the evil lead. Later in his career, he will never have another lead role, at least as far as I know, only supporting villains - MAJOR DUNDEE, BARQUERO, ONCE A THIEF.... This movie seems to be not widely known, such a shame. He is terrific here. Just terrific. His face, so disturbing face is unforgettable. Is is also his first film, and what a shame that he never played in THE UNTOUCHABLES series, I am sure Desilu productions would have found a supporting villain character for him.

If you took a blender and added a little bit Steve Buscemi, Arnold Stang and Nicolas Cage from "Vampire's Kiss," you'd get the whiny, bug-eyed bad acting from John Chandler in his first and only lead role.

Everyone else in the cast, including Savalas and Orbach were fine, but Chandler's performance was absurd, comical, and sort've fun to watch in a guilty pleasured way.

Not a bad Ed Wood/Corman-like film to watch and make fun of, so a few stars for the laughs.