No one who’s seen The Godfather will ever forget it, and that’s a good thing. The world at large will never forget it, either. And the same can be said for so many great crime movies that also happen to be among the best films ever made (it’s a surprisingly high number, in all honesty… like, The Shawshank Redemption probably counts, and that’s one everyone seems to love, too).
And then there are crime movies that either didn’t get much attention when they came out, or were decently well-known for a time, and maybe in a particular place, but then got a little forgotten about as time marched on. Some of those films are highlighted below, with a real emphasis on the “no one remembers” part of the topic, as best as possible. Like, at the time of writing, all these films have fewer than 7000 total views on Letterboxd.
10
‘The Day of the Owl’ (1968)
“Who?” you might say, if someone told you to watch The Day of the Owl. You’d be confused. You were so confused that you asked “Who?” instead of “What?”, but that’s okay. The pun, intended or not, was appreciated. But The Day of the Owl isn’t about actual owls of the “hoo-hoo-ing” variety, and is instead about how the mob, in a small Italian town, basically controls everyone who lives there in one way or another.
The plot, more specifically, concerns a police officer investigating a murder that happened there, and finding very few people want to assist in that investigation because everyone fears retaliation by the mob. Maybe The Day of the Owl is more of a drama than a crime film, and if it is a crime movie, it’s far from an exciting or traditionally entertaining one, yet it succeeds in what it sets out to do, and gets some good performances out of its admittedly quite well-known leads: Claudia Cardinale and Franco Nero.
9
‘The Perfect Game’ (1958)
You come across some fairly familiar premises, once you’ve watched a decent number of crime movies, and The Perfect Game has one of them. It’s about a few people taking part in what feels like a fairly straightforward and simple crime, at least at first, only to find… yeah, see, you know what the end of that sentence looks like. It doesn’t have to be typed out or explained.
It’s a small rise and then a big fall, with the initial crime getting the characters into more trouble, leading to a need for them to commit more serious crimes, all until things eventually (and inevitably) end badly. But The Perfect Game does it all really well. Call it The Near-Perfect Game, if you want. It’s buried under a great many other classic Japanese films that came out around the same time, but it undeniably deserves to be rescued from obscurity (at the time of writing, it’s the least-watched of all these movies on Letterboxd, with fewer than 300 views from the site’s users in total).
8
‘Dillinger’ (1945)
If you’ve seen a movie about John Dillinger before, then there’s a much better chance it was Michael Mann’s Public Enemies than the 1945 film simply called Dillinger. This one was made much closer to the time that the man himself was at large, and that’s not necessarily the thing that makes it better, or the only thing, more specifically, since there are lots of ways that it’s better (and more interesting) than Public Enemies. It’s also half the length, like, exactly.
Dillinger (1945) doesn’t have time to waste, and it’s just so relentlessly brisk, with that approach emphasizing the short but explosive life its titular character really lived. Of all the classic gangster movies of the black-and-white/film noir era, it’s easily one of the most unfairly overlooked or forgotten about.
7
‘Massacre Gun’ (1967)
There are three brothers at the center of Massacre Gun, and they all get wrapped up in a conflict that escalates into a gang war for initially personal reasons. The whole thing does end up being more of a fight for survival, once things get sufficiently out of control, and the film wastes very little time in having things explode and implode simultaneously, since its fairly ambitious narrative gets told in just under an hour and a half.
It’s a Japanese film about gangs and gang warfare, so it’s also a Yakuza movie, and one of the most underrated/overlooked out there. Also, the title Massacre Gun is one of the best of maybe all time, so it pretty much deserves your attention (and 89 minutes of your time) for that alone, when you think about it.
6
‘Two Men in Town’ (1973)
Two Men in Town stars Alain Delon as a recently released prisoner trying to settle back into society after about a decade spent behind bars. That’s the kind of premise that’s been explored in other films for sure, but that’s okay because it remains relevant and timely. That’s not saying it’s okay that the idea of post-jail life remains difficult in real life, but just that what Two Men in Town lays down is still pretty hard-hitting.
It’s all a bit inevitable, and maybe obvious, yet it still delivers. Delon is reliably good, and Jean Gabin, in one of his final roles, also turns in a strong performance as a social worker. Speaking of crime movies, the pair were also in The Sicilian Clan together, which is a little more well-known, and a film called Any Number Can Win, where both Gabin and Delon play previously imprisoned men tempted back into a life of crime (that one’s a heist movie, and a pretty good one at that).
5
‘Executive Koala’ (2005)
The strangest movie here, Executive Koala is fun – and somewhat easy – to compare to other pieces of entertainment, even if it’s the sort of thing that takes all those influences and very much ends up being its own thing. American Psycho is probably the easiest point of comparison, since it’s a psychological horror comedy about a (seeming) serial killer, but here, the serial killer is also a giant koala.
Executive Koala is gonzo, and made even stranger because the budget looks as though it was next to non-existent.
The world is a bit like BoJack Horseman, with anthropomorphic animals and humans living side-by-side, and there’s also maybe some Office Space, Donnie Darko, and Fight Club thrown in for good measure. Executive Koala is gonzo, and made even stranger because the budget looks as though it was next to non-existent. If you want something that’s unlike anything you’ve seen before, all the while having elements from things you probably have seen before, then maybe it’s worth a watch.
4
‘Armored Car Robbery’ (1950)
Technically even leaner and meaner than Dillinger, as it clocks in at only 67 minutes versus that movie’s 70-minute runtime, Armored Car Robbery does deliver the goods swiftly, based on that title. The robbery happens early on, and then the consequences of it are explored throughout the rest of the film, in a very unsurprising “crime doesn’t pay” kind of way (unsurprising because that’s how American crime movies always were, back during the days of the Hays Code).
It’s as no-nonsense as a movie could be, back in 1950, and it’s that dedication to what it is, alongside its acceptance of being nothing more, that makes Armored Car Robbery hold up oddly well, when watched more than three-quarters of a century on from release. If you’ve only seen the quintessential noir movies, and want to check out film noir stuff made on more of a budget and with a B-movie feel, then this is easy to recommend.
3
‘The Big Racket’ (1976)
Italian crime movies of the 1970s don’t usually mess around, as something like The Big Racket demonstrates quite well. It’s actually not dissimilar premise-wise to the previously mentioned The Day of the Owl, though The Big Racket has quite a bit more by way of action, and it’s faster-paced, even if it’s also unafraid to be gritty and a little heavy when it wants to be.
There’s a town, some gangsters who have a hold over it, and a very determined police officer going up against those gangsters, all the while putting himself – and the very few people maybe willing to help him – in continually increasing danger. It’s one of the better movies directed by Enzo G. Castellari, too, who was very prolific as a B-movie filmmaker back in the 1970s and 1980s (his best-known and greatest film is probably Inglorious Bastards, which has a title that might sound familiar).
2
‘Vengeance!’ (1970)
It is technically a martial arts movie first, and a crime film second, but Vengeance! still feels worth mentioning here. The bad guys are all criminals, and then the hero is also a bad guy, eventually. He wants vengeance (surprise!) for the death of his brother, and goes particularly far in seeking it out, turning into more of a monster as his goal consumes him.
Vengeance! is a bummer, because there’s a real hopelessness and nihilism to the whole thing, yet the fight sequences are so well-staged (not to mention frequent) that the whole movie ends up tremendously entertaining, too. It’s doing a lot for a martial arts movie that might sound by-the-numbers on the surface, since there are so many Shaw Brothers films that have revenge-focused narratives… but few are as good as this one.
1
‘Outlaw: Gangster VIP’ (1968)
Outlaw: Gangster VIP is a candidate for the title of best Yakuza movie of all time, and it’s a perfect movie to watch if you’ve never seen a Yakuza film before, yet it’s way too overlooked considering how good it is. The plot won’t really sell it, admittedly, since it’s about a criminal wanting to break away from a life of crime, and then being wronged, which leads to a desire for revenge.
And a tension between staying free of the gang life or turning back toward violence, since vengeance (as Vengeance! showed) is often violent. Outlaw: Gangster VIP is another film that balances its dark and downbeat stuff with style and other things that make it oddly entertaining. The style here, and the way it’s edited, have made it hold up incredibly well for something that’s now getting on in years.
Outlaw: Gangster VIP
- Release Date
-
January 13, 1968
- Runtime
-
94 minutes
- Director
-
Toshio Masuda
- Writers
-
Reiji Kubota, Kaneo Ikegami, Goro Fujita
-
Tetsuya Watari
Goro Fujikawa
-
Chieko Matsubara
Yukiko Hashimoto
-
Mitsuo Hamada
Takeo Tsujikawa
-
Tamio Kawachi
Isamu Tsujikawa