Gangs, Inc.

Phil Rosen's Gangs, Inc. (1941), originally entitled Paper Bullets, comes to DVD in a fairly good-looking edition. The source is a reasonably intact print with perhaps a few missing frames and some very short rough patches on the audio, as well as some vertical scratches and intermittent frame damage, but otherwise, there are no particular flaws and nothing that makes the disc objectionable. The movie looks about as good as, and perhaps a bit better, than it did on public domain cable showings during the 1980s. Two night-time car chases are a bit difficult to view, but one suspects that this was always the case in this Producers Releasing Corporation release, which took less than ten days to film. It's all briskly paced hardboiled fun, although also a bit misleading in the packaging -- Gangs, Inc. was one of a small group of movies in which Alan Ladd (who is credited very prominently on the artwork) appeared in a supporting role, and which were reissued with new credits moving him up considerably in the cast list; he plays a key but small part here, definitely not up to the third-from-the-top billing he gets on the disc. The movie also runs only 68 minutes, not the 73 minutes claimed on the box. The six chapters standard to any Alpha Video release are, strangely enough, not remotely adequate to break down the movie's highly episodic plot, which advances 20 years in its first ten minutes.