GANG BUSTERS (1954)

Описание: If the purpose of wearing a disguise is to not call attention to yourself, then why the hell disguise yourself as a one-armed man? Just how many one-armed men do you see during the course of a day? A week? A month? Ever? So why wear a disguise that only calls attention to yourself, especially when you're on your way to committing a robbery and also carrying a rifle wrapped in a blanket?! More to the point, why do it a second time if it already got you arrested once before?! But, hey, that's what real-life 'Master Criminal' John Omar Pinson does in Gang Busters, the 'true story' of a man described as 'society's enemy.' But Pinson's daffy disguises are just one of the many oddball joys of this heavy-handed crime-bustin' bio-pic which chooses for its subject not Public Enemy Number One, or Public Enemy Number Two, or even Public Enemy Number Three, but Public Enemy Number Four!

After his first arrest as a one-armed man, Pinson is sent to Oregon State Penitentiary and 'within six months was King of the Yard!' He also quickly escapes... in a burlap bag. Eight days later, 'the dapper, smooth-talking criminal,' shoots a cop suspicious of his second one-armed-man disguise, then gets arrested in a train depot while dressed as a bearded professor complete with a lap dog. He ends up back in Oregon State and, after starting a fire, is held in solitary confinement. But Pinson is slipped a file – in a piece of bread no less – by 'a two-bit gutless punk' named Wayne Long, who's in awe of him: 'I worship Pinson! I think he's a mastermind! The greatest criminal that ever lived!' (There's also an undercurrent of homosexuality with Wayne that a 1954 crime film obviously couldn't go near.) Dressed as a prison guard – with a painted-on mustache – Pinson again escapes, this time with a thug named Slug. After stealing a car and slapping JOYCE JAMESON (The Comedy of Terrors), the two get shot up and Pinson dies. But when Slug is later captured and confesses all, he leads police to Pinson's grave which is inexplicably empty! 'In my twenty years of police work, it's the strangest thing I ever saw,' says a mystified cop. However, that weasel Wayne thinks Pinson is very much alive and, the moment his sentence is up, tries to attract Pinson's attention – by going on a crime spree...