Fresh and Exciting

Expected more

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The Big Shakedown has Ricardo Cortez looking for a new racket for his mob now that Prohibition is a thing of the past. While in Charles Farrell's drugstore Farrell says to Cortez that a whole lot of things that are sold can be easily counterfeited and he has the chemical know how to do it. As it is Farrell and fiancé and soon to be wife Bette Davis are barely keeping their heads above water with the chain stores moving in. Farrell and Cortez start manufacturing things like toothpaste, cosmetics, various other things you find in pharmacies.But when they start manufacturing their own cut rate pharmaceuticals Farrell balks, but he's in way too deep. This film definitely belongs to Ricardo Cortez. He is really a piece of work even keeping two women on a string Glenda Farrell and Renee Whitney. Featured in the film is a chick fight between the two of them over Cortez whom if these women thought about would have dumped him. It ends badly for one of them. Allen Jenkins and Dewey Robinson make a fine pair of pharmaceutical salesmen.Bette Davis is here and puts whatever life she can into her role as Farrell's faithful wife. But this was one of those thankless parts that Warner Brothers gave her in the beginning.The Big Shakedown is a decent enough B drama, but my big question here is where was the Food and Drug Administration while all this was going on?

Pharmacist Charles Farrell goes into business with gangster Ricardo Cortez making counterfeit toothpaste and cosmetics. Soon Cortez wants to branch out into making medication, which Farrell isn't happy about. But Farrell wants to marry fiancée Bette Davis and give her financial security. Early Bette flick before she had really developed her style. She's fine but there's not a lot for her to do through most of the picture but worry about her guy. Charles Farrell is OK. Ricardo Cortez is a great bad guy as usual. Nice supporting cast includes Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins, and Henry O'Neill. Fun cat fight between Glenda Farrell and Renee Whitney. Exciting climax you will not be able to predict!

I am sure it was not just Miss Bette Davis who was appalled at having to try and breathe life into poor screenplays like this, for the appropriately titled "The Big Shakedown" (1934). Here with her were two major stars of the silent era, Charles Farrell and Ricardo Cortez, who had some of the most successful silent film credits to their names, and they were forced by the studio to endure mediocre, uninspiring roles in talkies like these, with implausible plots which border on the ludicrous. Perhaps this film might have had more bite to it if it had been a precode, perhaps not. However it isn't fair to blame the actors for a bad script. It's just horrible, folks. If Einstein were an actor even he couldn't have figured out how to breathe life into this one.They all try to do the best they can under the circumstances. Bette brings some sympathy to her good girl role; Charles Farrell is still unbelievably handsome, but his character makes some bad decisions out of greed for quick wealth, therefore his position is tenuous at best, and Ricardo Cortez tries to bring some taut dimension to a thankless role of yet another gangster type. I'm used to seeing him die at the end of talkies, however this ending takes the cake: he's shot AND falls into a tub of acid. Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle! Watch Ricardo fry! Creepy!Silent film fans and Bette fans should give it a wink, just don't be surprised if your winks turn into a complete shut-eye. Snore...........5 out of 10.

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!