Such a frustrating disappointment

A Masterpiece!

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Back in the days when stardom meant signing a seven-year contract, Bette Davis didn't have much choice but to play the wife of a struggling pharmacist, who gets mixed up with the mob, in this mellerdrama. Hubby Charles Farrell is conscripted by gangster Ricardo Cortez to make counterfeit products like tooth paste and face powder. But when Cortez demands cheap knock-offs of high-priced medication, lives are in danger...Bette's included. She plays the ingénue role surprisingly well without the tics and mannerisms which would mark (and sometimes mar) her later career. Tall, handsome Charles Farrell, on the other hand, couldn't act. To say that he had two expressions is putting it generously. Fortunately, Cortez as the suave hood behind the counterfeiting scheme takes up the slack and Glenda Farrell drops seductively by as a gun moll who knows too much. A pretty entertaining B movie made moreso by the youthful Bette Davis.

This is an Odd one to say the Least. Now that Prohibition has been Repealed Bootleggers get into the Fake Cosmetic and Drug Business. Making Generic and Ineffective Products and Slapping Brand Names on the Labels.There are Scenes that are Downright Bizarre, like a Row of Gangsters Brushing Their Teeth, a Jewish Teenager who keeps a Ledger and Wisecracks about Sales Tax, a Mother Buying Cough Syrup "for her child", "don't wrap it up I'll drink it, I mean carry it that way." A Cat Fight with some Slang Banter that is Priceless, a Miscarriage, a Brutal Torture Scene, and some Moralizing in the End that is so Over the Top it Defies Dramatic License, and there are Others.Bette Davis Fans can Check this out to see why She was so Disgusted with Light Weight Roles like this that She Fled to England. She Looks Beautiful here but doesn't have much to do. The Film is Worth a Watch for its Strangeness but not much Else. There is a lot of Drug Talk and Pre-Code References to Coke (the drug not the drink) but Nothing Racy or Raunchy.

An interesting but ultimately average melodrama where manufacturers of counterfeit medicinal products make an idealistic girl who works at a pharmacy to be the innocent bystander who pays the price. This was the sort of ultra-gritty movies that Warner Bros. was churning out a mile a minute, and for the lack of gloss and nifty cinematic presentation they made up for in droves with the subject matters they took on -- something no one was doing at the time. It's surprising that the Code didn't step in to evaluate this crime-drama, but given the fact that any bad behavior is more or less curtailed and there is an obvious moral to the story, the end-result was this short little B-movie. THE BIG SHAKEDOWN is, as much of the movies of its time from Warners, a bare-bones plot that moves quite rapidly and focuses less on the actors than on getting from point A to point B in breakneck time. Some mildly disturbing scenes involve a vat of hydrochloric acid and a man falling into it, and Bette Davis' rather bland reaction to her character's miscarriage (and her unbelieably swift ability to bounce back, as if nothing had happened). It's a hoot (for me) to watch Glenda Farrell play her usual gangster's moll as she burns a path right down her lines -- the woman definitely had some talent in being able to enunciate just under four hundred words a minute!

An early Bette Davis melodrama when she was still making those B pictures for Warner Bros. She plays an employee in a drug store , engaged to the owner, pharmacist Charles Farrell, during the heart of the depression, and it's not doing too well. Neither is the beer rackets, since Prohibition has been repealed and hundreds of beer factories have sprung up, hurting racketeer Ricardo Cortez and his henchmen. He gets an antacid in Farrell's store, but it is a home-made one by Farrell, since he was out of the brand Cortez wanted. It tastes identical to that brand and did the trick, giving Cortez an idea for a new racket. He get Farrell to make lots of items -- toothpaste, minor medicines, cosmetics, etc. to sell at cut-rate prices. Cortez, however, puts brand names on them, causing one toothpaste company to declare backruptcy eventually. When Farrell has enough money to quit, he marries Davis, but Cortez won't let him quit. Instead, Cortez wants to expand to drugs. First is an antiseptic without the antiseptic properties. Then it is digitalis without the stimulant property. Cortez keeps Farrell in line by threats against Davis, which Farrell takes seriously after a witness who informed the district attorney of the racket was murdered. Farrell finally realizes the horrible consequences of the phony medicine when the pregnant Davis loses her baby because the digitalis given to her in the hospital did not work. He grabs a gun and goes after Cortez.