This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

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

Humphrey Bogart was tiring of playing gangsters in film after film for "Warner Bros." and sought any kind of variation in such vehicles. In "King of the Underworld," his character has a Napoleon fixation and has aspirations to become just like him. The running time helps to keep this minor movie at a reasonable pace. Kay Francis was once a fairly big star but by 1939, her popularity had gone into decline. She is hardly remembered these days but she was a very capable performer. In this movie, she plays a doctor who has no choice but to leave her city practice and set up shop in the countryside. Bogart isn't quite his usual evil, sneering self and his scenes with Francis are quite good. The film doesn't rise above being ordinary but it isn't a terrible film by any means.

"King Of The Underworld" is, without exaggeration, the worst Bogart film I have seen. He plays an impossibly-dim, impossibly-evil gangster with no motivation whatsoever. The screenplay calls for his character to torture Kay Francis and take interest in a hobo/writer he discovers at the side of the road, so that's what he does. Little is explained, and even less makes sense. (Was the character of Carole's mother there only for PURE exposition?) Warner Bros. made legendary crime films in the 30's and 40's, so there is no excuse for this graceless disaster. I love Bogie but he must have been incredibly discouraged by the script: he gives the worst performance of his career and often looks like he just wants the damn film to END. You will too.Bogart's kingpin character Joe Gurney should logically want to murder Dr. Carole Nelson. She's a potential witness who might turn him over to the police in order to clear her name and save her medical practice. And although Bogie had no problem shooting a potential snitch in the back- in cold blood- in the film's opening minutes, the thought of harming Carole apparently never enters his mind, even when he's got her alone with his cronies. Caution: Open Plot-Holes Ahead. Next we have the barely-literate Joe obsessed with Napoleon- kinda. He sees himself as some Napoleon-like figure and drops vague "Napoleonisms" that sound like they were made up on the spot. Since all we know about Joe Gurney is in relation to Carole Nelson's case, this Napoleon sub-plot is incomplete and out of place. (Would the film be any different if he identified instead with Spiderman?) When Carole tells Bogie he's the moronic type Bogart brags to his goons- straight-faced, "Did you hear that, fellas? I'm the moronic type!" That's about the level of wit this film has to offer.The finale, in which Dr. Nelson blinds Bogie and the boys with magic eye drops, would be more at home in a Three Stooges short. If you want great Bogart go see High Sierra, The Big Sleep, Casablanca, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Key Largo, or The Maltese Falcon. This "King" is a crab.GRADE: C-

I wonder if the screenwriter for this film had somebody in mind as a model for the criminal Humphrey Bogart plays. In the 1920s and 1930s there was a major war between Joe Masseria and Salvator Marranzano for control of New York's criminal underworld. Marranzano, on the surface, seemed more modern to the younger crowd of gangsters like Luciano, Costello, Siegel, Lansky, and Lepke, and they helped him get rid of the "Mustache Petes" or old style gangsters supporting Masseria (and eventually Masseria himself). But they found that rather than restructuring the criminal world into a model corporate structure, Marranzano had delusions of grandeur. He was intoxicated by the image and memory of Gaius Julius Caesar, and intended to make himself the Caesar of the New York Underworld. Eventually "Caesar" Marranzano was bumped off by the disgruntled young Turks who did not plan for him to be a "Capo di Capo".Interestingly enough he was stabbed to death in his office - one wonders if Luciano and the others purposely copied Caesar's demise in the forum. In this remake of an early Paul Muni film, DR. SOCRATES, Kay Francis is a female doctor who discovers that her late husband was tied to a powerful mobster (Bogart) and got killed helping him with some medical attention for one of his gang. The police and A.D.A. (Pierre Watkins) arrest and try Francis on really weak grounds as an accomplice, but the jury is deadlocked and she is released while the A.D.A. decides whether or not to retry her. Francis is determined to prove her innocence by catching Bogart.Humphrey Bogart played many gangsters in the 1930s, and most of them were quite dangerous types, like Duke Mantee in THE PETRIFIED FOREST or Baby Face Martin in DEAD END. But his gangster boss here is ridiculous. The reason is that the screenwriter created a personality point about this gangster that is never pursued properly in the film. Bogart is enamored by the career of Napoleon Bonaparte, and keeps mentioning this. Never once in the course of the film, outside an occasional reference to say Waterloo or some incident like that, do we see Bogie trying to use Napoleons aphorisms and strategies in his crimes! For example, Bonaparte once dismissed military brilliance and said something to the effect that he preferred "lucky" generals to brilliant ones. He realized that a brilliant general could get so hung up about his own brilliant schemes that he could blow a major battle, whereas a "lucky" general looks quickly at a situation and grabs the initiative. Bogart does not show any inclination to follow that particular piece of wisdom, and does not even mention it.Bogart also is never shown using any of the strategies that made Marengo or Austerlitz or Jena victories that rang down through the last two centuries in his robbery schemes or crimes. For a man who supposedly admires a great figure he doesn't seem willing to learn from him!In the plot Francis hides in a small town and Bogart shows up there to rescue two of his men from the local police (actually similar to an incident involving gangster John Dillinger). Bogart has also picked up a traveling writer (James Stephenson) who he realizes can ghost write Bogies criminal memoirs. Stephenson is arrested in the incident, but he is released into Francis' custody (she is now a doctor in the town), and subsequently kidnapped by Bogie (not quite like the unfortunate Duc de Enghien). Soon Francis is in pursuit, and notes Bogies health as a potential key to undermining his control of her fate and Stephenson's. It involves giving him a peculiar drug that has to be also given to all his men at the same time to disable them all. This part of the script is absolutely unbelievable as Bogie's gangster does not accept the simple solution of selecting one of his men as a guinea pig to test the drug on (Francis manages to browbeat him into taking the drug!).There are elements of other, better films in KING OF THE UNDERWORLD. Most notable is James Stephenson's writer/hobo who resembles Leslie Howard's in THE PETRIFIED FOREST. The acting is pretty good (best are the scenes involving the local bigwig doctor who resents the arrival of Francis in the small town, and starts making problems for her). Stephenson was a fine young actor, whose best role (the troubled barrister defending Bette Davis' "Leslie Crosby" in THE LETTER) was yet to come, and his death in the early 1940s was a true loss to movies. Francis does nicely in her role, even if her victory over Bogie is asinine. Bogie is good - wish I could say the same for his character or the script.

In this theatrical melodrama Humphrey plays a gangster; amazing stretch of the imagination, isn't it? A semi-literate, Bogie (bad guy Joe Gurney) idolizes Napoleon (short guy ego tripper) and quotes le petit emperor on occasion to justify his own actions, such as placing chunks of lead into the physiques of various inconvenient people with the assistance of gunpowder. He utilizes this method of employee reduction to lay off (without benefits) his doctor, who's wife, Kay Francis (Dr. Carole Nelson), who has just won the Isabella Rossellini look-a-like contest, is also a doctor. She scrams Big City to settle down in a small town to start over, and prove her innocence on a charge of consorting with known actors who play criminals. This is considered highly unprofessional by other doctors, who sent in notes of complaint from the golf course.Well, wonders never cease as Bogie and his gang show up coincidentally and quite by chance in that very exact identical same town! Of all the burgs in all the world, why did they have to drive into this one? Additionally, the gang has picked up a hitch-hiking writer (James Stephenson) who has become Bogie's biographer, not entirely of his own volition. Nefarious doings evolve, love blossoms, lots of action and shooting, police persons with tommy-guns are attracted; and maybe, just maybe the gangster wins in a 1930's era movie, by special dispensation of the Hayes Office. Or maybe not. Jeepers, the suspense is killing you, so don't miss this movie if you get a chance! Just remember, the criminals are the ones who use poor grammar and have a tendency to fall down with holes in their bodies. Bogie proves adept at utilizing the vernacular popular amongst persons criminally inclined, as usual. And, I don't mind telling you that there is a modicum of suspense as the fair doctorette bravely faces adversaries on both sides of the law. I actually bit a fingernail. I give this one gun up with a lot of bullets. Hey, it's watchable and it's got Bogie! Xoxox Mike