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.

Although this is typical of the low-budget quickies that Warners churned out like hotcakes in the Thirties it offers Bette Davis in her most youthfully appealing "down-to-earth platinum blonde girl" phase. You can find the same character in THREE ON A MATCH, THE GIRL FROM 10TH AVENUE, THE PETRIFIED FOREST and others. She exudes an innocent but intelligent, unaffected femininity that seems to have evaporated by the time she hit her stride with JEZEBEL, so it's good that this phase of her career is preserved - if only to track her evolution as an actress. Note the energy and vitality she injects (perhaps effortlessly) into a supporting role as the girlfriend-wife, stealing every scene she's in - without relying on conventional beauty. It's kind of fun also to see how the scenarists managed to leap from one implausible, contrived plot development to the next - but that's a secondary matter because most of these films were beyond belief. The point was to make a moral point, not to be narratively convincing. The point here being: evil gangsters, beware of the authorities because they'll get you!

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.