The Flanagan Boy (1953)

Masterful Movie

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Italian boxing promoter Giuseppe Vecchi (Frederick Valk) thinks he has found a young fighter, Johnny Flanagan (Tony Wright), that with some training could be a heavyweight champion. Vecchi's bombshell blonde wife, Lorna (Barbara Payton), whom he brought back from a trip to America, soon becomes a distraction. Flanagan finds success in the ring and has the confidence to compete in big money fights. Devious Lorna seduces the young fighter into an affair and convinces him there is a lot of money upon her husband's death. This beautiful blonde is bad, bad, bad. Also in the cast: Sidney James, John Slater, John Brooking and Marie Burke.

A young boxer (John Slater) is discovered and a nice boxing promoter, Giuseppe (Frederick Valk). However, the aging Giuseppe is married to a dame that is pure poison (Barbara Payton)--and it's obvious to everyone but sweet Giuseppe. Naturally, she gets her claws into the naive fighter and later she hatches a plot to kill her husband! This is a rather interesting example of British Film Noir. Despite having a very familiar plot of a wicked femme fatale that is reminiscent of such films as DOUBLE INDEMNITY and THE KILLERS, the film still manages to be very entertaining. Most of this is due to the excellent script that, despite familiar themes, has excellent dialog and pacing. Additionally, the mostly small-time acting cast generally did a good job--though I did think the character of Giuseppe was rather over-played.The most fascinating things about this film are the behind the scenes aspects. Ms. Payton plays a character that is pretty much the real Barbara Payton. While in her very, very checkered past she was never connected with a murder, Ms. Payton was a horrid individual and was essentially a true-life femme fatale! Having orchestrated a beating delivered by her lovers (Tom Neal and Franchot Tone), she then went on to substance abuse, shoplifting and prostitution before dying of liver failure and heart disease at age 39! What's more fascinating than this is the very final scene where another young boxer is shown heading towards the camera. This guy is the spitting image of Tom Neal!! He's not listed in the IMDb credits and IMDb doesn't list him as being in THE FLANAGAN BOY. I assume the producers of this film must have scoured high and low to find another actor like Neal in order to play off the negative publicity the Payton-Neal affair two years earlier! Well worth a look-the film is fascinating and the real-life Payton parallels are even more interesting.

I saw this under its alternate title "Bad Blonde." Though Barbara Payton is billed before the title, I was confused: Yes, the actress had quite a reputation. She had life that was messy and ultimately very sad. It was more sordid and more interesting than the tabloid girls of today.And the character she played was bad, to be sure. Yet, the movie makes much more sense under its original title: It's primarily about the character played by Tony Wright. Ms. Payton wears some alluring costumes but we hardly ever see Wright with his shirt on. When he's not boxing, he's swimming.It's a sad story. Sort of a film noir, yes. But we feel bad for the basically decent people who are trampled on because of others' greed and desires. Frederick Valk is excellent as Giuseppi, the man drawn into representing the title character in his fight career.The plot reminded me, particularly in his character, of Tennessee Williams" "Orpheus Descending." An interesting movie, if ultimately not an especially good one.

This is a British, early Hammer rip-off of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE starring Barbara Payton. It's very dull and slow, even though Payton, Sid James and others try hard. One of the worst things in it is an over-the-top, scenery-chewing, story-stopping performance by Frederick Valk. He plays the cuckolded husband and does it with more Italian cliches and stereotypes than anyone could think possible.I'm a fan of Hammer films, but this one's unwatchable. Reginald LeBorg has done far better work elsewhere.