The Purple Gang (1959) User Reviews (14)

A mix of fact and fiction

[AlsExGal · 7/10 · 12 May 2012]

Most of my 7/10 goes to two things - Robert Blake's effective portrayal of completely amoral, calculating, and mentally unbalanced baby-faced mobster Honeyboy Willard and to the rather detached documentary feel of this film as it is narrated by the cop that has vowed to put the Purple Gang away, Barry Sullivan as Lt. William P. Harley of the Detroit Police. It really has the look and feel of "The Untouchables" except with poverty row roots.

There really was a Purple Gang in Detroit in the 20's and 30's, although the character of Honeyboy is a fictional one - the actual power in the real gang was in the hands of four Jewish brothers. The cleaner and dyers war was a real one, except in real life the Purple Gang was allied with the union against non-union independents. There was no rather clean ending to the story of the Purples in real life. Like so many other gangs, Prohibition gave them money and power they could have only dreamed about, and its end sent them on a slow decline with the primary source of their wealth literally dried up.

This film is unusual in that there are no female leads or even substantial female supporting roles here. Women are just the subjects of particularly savage crimes by the Purples, and very little more, meant to underscore the violence of the Purple Gang.

If this film had been in wider release by a bigger studio, maybe Robert Blake wouldn't have had to wait until 1967 and "In Cold Blood" to catapult to stardom. Here he steals the show, kills everyone else, and gives a truly riveting performance of a guy who really loves his work for reasons that seem to have more to do with a need for power and a desire to be feared than just pure greed. Don't believe the low rating on this one - give it a try realizing it is a B feature from a small studio made just as the production code was losing its grip.

Not a purple patch

[FilmFlaneur · 5/10 · 31 August 2018]

The Purple Gang was a mob of bootleggers and hijackers with predominantly Jewish members operating in Detroit, Michigan, during the 1920s. They came to be Detroit's dominant criminal gang, but ultimately excessive violence and infighting caused the gang to self-destruct in the 1930s. This Allied Artists production, leveraged by a goodly amount of footage lifted from earlier films, plays fast and loose with what was an interesting history in a production weighted by two excellent leads, Sullivan and Blake, and which contains two or three memorably violent scenes while Blake's screaming claustrophobia offers other choice moments. Ultimately not one of the genre stand outs (for that one needs to seek out such titles as AL CAPONE or the RISE AND FALL OF LEGS DIAMOND etc) it is never the less a entertaining enough time waster even if it ends up feeling rather perfunctory. Sullivan's best gangster film, imho, is the appropriately named THE GANGSTER.

Enjoyable...just don't expect a history lesson here.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 8 December 2019]

"The Purple Gang" is a film that is enjoyable to watch--much like an episode of "The Untouchables". However, like that television show, it's not much of a history lesson and the actions of the real Purple Gang in Detroit were very, very different than what you see in the film. In fact, you'd hardly recognize much of the gang in this one.

In real life, the Purple Gang was a tough organization in Detroit consisting mostly of Jewish gangsters. The gang was run by several brothers as well. And, the end of the gang was nothing like in the film. Yet, in the film they are run by one guy alone (Robert Blake) and the actors all seem like typical antisocial Gentiles.

So why, despite being mostly wrong, do I score this one a 6? Well, it's exciting and as long as you accept that it's mostly fiction, you'll have a nice time watching the film. It never is dull!

Chillingly charismatic

[jeffhill1 · 14 March 2002]

Robert Blake's portrayal of Honeyboy is chillingly charismatic. Honeyboy leads his gang of teenage hoodlums to success in the big leagues of organized crime. The key to Honeyboy's success and his dedication as a "leader" lies in the fact that he is a sociopathic killer and a psychopathic egomaniac. Robert Blake plays it all to the hilt and still manages to make Honeyboy cute and sympathetic.

Holds your attention!

[JohnHowardReid · 7/10 · 16 October 2016]

Despite some dull dialogue padding and other obvious exercises in penny-pinching, this is quite a creditable effort from wrong-side- of-the-street's Allied Artists studio. Of course, Allied makes no mention of the fact that the gang members were actually Jewish and that their names have actually been changed to disguise this fact. Nevertheless, the moody, low-key photography by Ellis Carter, the occasionally stylish direction of Frank McDonald (who worked for just about every studio in Hollywood at one time or another. He started off as a dialogue director but soon graduated to "B" movies) and some excellent acting, particular Robert Blake's compellingly psychotic portrayal, give this film a considerable edge over its stablemates. Incidentally, Lloyd Garnell is actually billed as the "chief set electrician". There were never less than three – and most often at least four – set electricians on even the most humble movie. They were vital. If the director was all ready to shoot, but the set not properly lit

"Only the Civic Awareness of the American Public . . . "

[oscaralbert · 6/10 · 6 December 2019]

" . . . can bring an end to Rat Pack Terrorism," cautions the voiceover guy to conclude THE PURPLE GANG. Re-released by the always eponymous Warner Bros., this flick is carefully crafted to warn our USA Homeland about the nefarious Canadian miscreants such as the "Olson Brothers" who smuggle contraband including booze, hookers, and dope across our Open Northern Border. When the Olson Gang hooks up with the local titular "rat pack," all bets are off. No one is safe. Perverse sexual predator thugs venture North from the so-called Motor City into the formerly bucolic echelons of Macomb and Oakland Counties to assault pregnant housewives, before compelling them to jump to their deaths from bedroom windows--slaying BOTH the expectant moms and their pending bundles of joy! Certainly any POTUS with a brain in his head could not view THE PURPLE GANG without giving America's vulnerable NORTHERN border the highest, top priority when and if walls are actually being built. Since THE PURPLE GANG's heyday, Canadian predators have reduced Motown's population by two-thirds, slicing and dicing the USA's fourth largest city down to the size of Peoria or Kalamazoo! Something must be done ASAP, before the last American living south of Eight Mile Road turns off the lights in Detroit! You owe it to your muscle car to watch THE PURPLE GANG, and then demand that the White House construct an 80-foot high Great Wall along the Detroit River, and the rest of America's Achilles Heel to the North!

Classic Example of a "B" movie

[siskokid888-923-973294 · 6/10 · 18 February 2021]

Low budget "exposee" style film paints a somewhat accurate picture of Detroit's Purple Gang from the 20s. Worth seeing for Robert Blake's performance, which transcends the movie.

Allied Artists says it all...

[BigG-2 · 3/10 · 21 May 2012]

Cheapo production. This is supposed to be the 1920s, but there is no attempt to use costumes or hair styles of that era. The men all wear 1950s hats. Robert Blake plays tough as the juvenile gang leader. Barry Sullivan walks through his part as the detective as though he wanted to be somewhere else. His wife,of course, wants him to quit. The gang looks like a Central Casting call for B-list juveniles. As clean and nice looking a bunch of hoodlums as can be imagined. If they could dance they would be ready for West Side Story. The sets are unadorned and look like they were assembled in somebody's garage. There is a lot of unconvincing gunplay and actors falling to the floor, but no blood.

In the Roaring 20s purple was the color of Detroit

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 6 December 2019]

During this period of the late Eisenhower and Kennedy years many studios started making films of the notorious Prohibition and post Prohibition years. No coincidence that these were the years The Untouchables found a TV audience.

In 1959 Allied Artists put out the Purple Gang who were as rough a bunch in real life as any. When Al Capone tried to take over their Detroit territory the Purples sent Capone back limping to Chicago.

Allied Artists was the former Monogram Pictures so you knew it was going to be cheap. It certainly is a B product.

But it boasts an eletrifying performance by Robert Blake as the leader of the Purples. For that alone you should not miss this film.

But it ain't the real story of The Purple Gang.

Forgotten Gangs, Forgotten Players

[boblipton · 5/10 · 6 December 2019]

Policeman Barry Sullivan fights Detroit's Purple Gang led by Robert Blake in the 1920s and 1930s in this Allied Artists programmer directed by Frank MacDonald. Quite obviously shot on studio lots and underdecorated sets, with a lot of stock footage edited into montages, it also features a high-speed narrative voice-over narrative by Sullivan.

The Purple Gang was a real Detroit mob, perhaps best remembered for being predominantly Jewish. The movie makes no indication of this.

Suzanne Ridgeway has a small part in this movie. She had entered the movies in 1937. Ultimately, she appeared in 233 feature films, 12 shorts and 13 television appearances. In that time, she was received on-screen credit four times, including the infamous FROM HELL IT CAME. This was her last movie appearance. She died in 1996, 78 years old, another of the forgotten horde of players whose presence helped make two Oscar winners and a multitude of other movies.

Could have been re-titled "The Teddy Bears Picnic"

[Ed-Shullivan · 4/10 · 23 March 2021]

True Grit? Not at all. Tough guys for kids? I would have called this gang the "Phony Baloney Gang". No doubt lead actor Robert Blake who plays the head of the Purple Gang, William Joseph 'Honeyboy' Willard, has played some pretty decent tough guy's in other Crime genre films such as he did in (1956) Rumble On the Docks, (1958) Revolt in the Big House, and of course (1967) In Cold Blood. But as for this Crime genre film I was grossly disappointed in Robert Blake's performance.

The entire film could be rated an abysmal B rated film, and unless it was filmed over one single weekend than there is no other excuse for the quality of the picture as well as the story line.

I give it an abysmal 4 out of 10 IMDB rating.

Great 40s crime story

[drjgardner · 4/10 · 6 December 2019]

Yes, but it's made in 1959 and released in 1960. As such, there isn't much to recommend it, except for Robert Blake's performance.

Robert Blake does Edward G. Robinson

[kevinolzak · 5/10 · 14 June 2020]

1959's "The Purple Gang" was an Allied Artists take on a real life gang of juvenile mobsters terrorizing the Detroit underworld of the 20s and early 30s. Largely a work of fiction with plenty of stock footage narrated by Barry Sullivan's Police Lt. Harley to allow for some authenticity but so far as gangster pictures go this one is pretty routine. The one standout is former child actor Robert Blake as Purple Gang leader 'Honey Boy' Willard, heading straight for the big time with a protection racket aimed at Canadian bootlegging, then a shakedown of local laundry businesses which forces the Mafia to show its hand in the fray. Even women aren't safe from their brutality, from Harley's pregnant wife (Elaine Edwards) to the attractive social worker (Jody Lawrance) whose psychobabble was previously a thorn in Harley's side, later executed between the eyes by a would be rapist who knows she can finger every culprit. There's nothing new to distinguish it from previous, better known efforts, only Blake's claustrophobic sociopath to help it stand out at all, 8 years before his more chilling turn in Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood."

Tough, rough gangster biopic drarma

[searchanddestroy-1 · 17 December 2023]

As I have already told many many times in my reviews, the early sixties in Hollywood was the era where gangsters period crime biopics were gallore, more or less inspired from actual facts though: PORTRAIT OF A MOBSTER, PAY OR DIE, MURDER INC, RISE AND FALL OF LEGS DIAMOND, KING OF THE ROARING 20'S, BABY FACE NELSON, YOUNG DILLIGER, AL CAPONE, MAD DOG CALL. Only "mature" Dillinger's character was missing between a 1945 and 1973 movie !!!! This one is not the least in terms of quality, yes, 1961 was the year of this kind of gangster tales, maybe the TV series THE UNTOUCHABLES influenced this period. I am dead sure of it. Robert Blake as here as John Davis Chandler was in MAD DOG CALL; purely terrific as a cold blooded killer. It begins like a DEAD END KIDS flick but the pace rapidly changes. Frank Mac Donald's best film for me, because he was rather a lousy director. Mostly B westerns for B companies.