Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Only reason to catch this soft-core sleaze is Lenny Bruce in a tough guy role. No effort here for the controversial comedian to be funny. Instead, he's sort of a third-rate George Raft. The dreadful effort at laughs comes instead from a guy mugging it up like Jerry Lewis's brain dead brother. I expect this barrel bottom showed in a grind house or two on the coasts, and may have made back it's dollar-seventy budget. It's like three unadorned sets and a dirty alley are there to confine viewers, along with the bare backs of well-fed "dance hall" girls. Just as skimpy is a plot having something to do with diamond smuggling run by the dance hall owner. But don't expect anything like suspense or even interest. No need to keep beating a dead horse. People don't watch such a title for artistic excellence. Apparently, this is what passed for skid-row titillation, 1953 style. So where was Ed Wood when we needed him.

****SPOILERS**** Worth watching only for the film having the legendary stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce as the knife wielding wise cracking and cold blooded hood Vinny in what was to be Bruce's only movie role. And what a part it is! Bruce plays sleazy dance-hall operator Umberto Scalli's right-hand man whom as "Vince the Knife" keeps things in line in his joint by slicing up anyone, man woman and even pet, with his trusty switch-blade who gets out of line. Bruce for his part has trouble keeping a straight face even though he was the one who wrote the screenplay to this turkey that his utterly brainless unintentionally funny dialogue,"So I killed a guy! Does that makes me a criminal!" comes from.The movie has to do with Scalli using his dance-hall as a cover in smuggling stolen goods, mostly uncut diamonds, into the country by seamen who come there to get plastered and friendly with the young women who work there. There's the usual rivalry between Bruce or Vinny with his boss Umberto over who's running the place that leads to the enviable explosion at the very end of the film. Bruce does his best to stay focused on his part as Vinny by knifing a couple of customers who get out of line in demanding their money back, that was lifted from them by their dance partners, that's so outrageous that it takes a while for you to realize, in how phony them being murdered was, that they actually were killed!Knowing that there's no good going on in Scalli's dance-hall the US Customs Department has undercover Agent Edson go there looking for action as a seaman trying to get contraband into the country and using Scalli to fence it. It doesn't take much for Edson to get invited to this exclusive party being thrown by Scalli for just released hood Victor Pappas who spent 11 years in the can and hid $250,000.00 in gold before he was arrested. At the party we get to be entertained by Lenny Bruce's real life mom Sally Marr as dance-hall hostess Maxine who does a great version of the "Charleston". There's also at the party this really drunk and obnoxious looking character Punchy, with a phony combination Swedish and Irish accent, doing something called the "Tahitian Love Dance" that's interrupted when Bruce, or Vinny, spots Pappas getting a little friendly with his wife in real life and in the movie Honey, Honey Friedman Bruce. It's then that the action in the movie that up to that point was almost non-existent really starts to picks up with the you know what finally hitting the fan at full blast! This gives Bruce the chance he's been waiting for throughout the entire movie to get himself killed off so he can finally get himself out of being in it before it destroys his acting career!P.S As things turned out "Dance Hall Racket" was the only film Lenny Bruce was ever in which convinced him that acting wasn't exactly his cup of tea. Going into doing stand-up comedy Bruce ended up being busted by the police and court system for his off color jokes and dialogue that despite his popularity he ended up broke and in debt living off the charity of his friends and admirers and becoming hooked on hard drugs. The end of the road for Lenny Bruce came on the evening of August 3, 1966 when he was found dead in his motel bathroom from an overdose of heroin that seemed to be more suicidal then accidental on Lenny's part!

I saw this film solely because Lenny Bruce was in it.The whole story takes place on a three wall set made from cardboard which is meant to look like a dance hall, and pretty much everyone in this hall has their crooked fingers in pies.Lenny Bruce plays Vinnie, a hard man, and takes centre stage as he is clearly the best actor in this film. The other actors stand around, bump into each other and chew scenery while Lenny does his thing of being the star.Phil Tucker does nothing in the way of original directing often opting to cover scenes with a single master shot and letting the action play out in front of the camera.The print of this film that I saw (on DVD) was terrible, scratched with a constant blemish on the picture, the sound would often pop in and out and there where large jump cuts where someone has clearly edited out the nudity for some reason.All this is a shame because in spite of all its faults the movie isn't that bad, yes the plot seems rather padded and some of the rolls could do with better casting (the drunk with the hat stands out in my mind) but i have seen worse, much much worse than this. I would like to see someone buy this film and clean it up, get the print nice and crisp, film some extra insert shots that it feels like its missing and dub over some of those bad actors and then we'll see how really bad this film is.

This endearing sleaze classic is another "film a clef" from the Grade Z mastermind of ROBOT MONSTER, BROADWAY JUNGLE and CAPE CANAVERAL MONSTERS. This pulpy exposé film is best known for the casting of the notorious Lenny Bruce and his wife Honey Harlowe, but actually they're secondary characters in this "dance hall". Lenny plays the henchman of the gangster-owner, slapping around anyone who tries to double-cross this dubious entrepreneur.All things "Tucker-ian" are in abundance here: non-existent art direction (check out when customers want "to go to Hawaii", which basically means having some crummy palm tree put in front of their table while a dance hall girl smooches with them; that's the best set decoration in the entire film); badly overacted performances which go to the realm of baroquely cartoonish; impossibly dreary single-take medium-long shots in which you can view all the non-decor and the non-actors; and spare, washed-out cinematography only rivalled by Dreyer.But also, DANCE HALL RACKET is perhaps Phil Tucker's most structurally challenging film. Not bad for a movie taking place entirely in a shabby set with three tables, a cramped generic office and a back alley (these limited locations also compliment the stagnant lives of their inhabitants). This "complex meta-narrative" operates on several planes at once. The time-old tradition of having a wraparound story is in effect here, as one detective explains to another that "shocking story" of all the crime and corruption in this dance hall, where we view scenes the detectives couldn't possibly have known, much less been a part of. Despite the known presences of Bruce, Honey, and everyone's favourite world-weary bad guy Timothy Farrell, there are really no major characters. Even the eccentric customers "wanting to go to Hawaii" take equal precedence. There is really no plot in this impressionistic study, despite the faint whispers of racketeering. I've only ever seen this movie on the video offered by Something Weird, and that print more than a few times has some small scenes repeated. Evidently, the reels were mixed up and someone stopped it, put the right one on and kept going. But leaving these moments in adds another bizarre touch to the screwy narrative. It's as confounding as anything by Alain Resnais.By the same token, the latter incident is a classic example of how Tucker's filmography is in disrepair. Isn't it sadly ironic that the most well-preserved film in his legacy is ROBOT MONSTER... the film over which he threatened to commit suicide? Otherwise, the only remnants I've ever seen of Tucker's work come from some tattered composite prints. Phil Tucker is perhaps the last undiscovered country of Grade Z filmmaking. I mean, even Andy Milligan had a book written about him! Little exists in print about Mr. Tucker, and perhaps there are a few more films signed by him, that are collecting dust somewhere that need to be found. Because of his poverty row films, and the enigma surrounding their creator, his legacy remains a fascinating one.