MGM hits the streets with this Pre-Code gangster flick starring Wallace Beery as Slaughterhouse Scorpio, a thuggish stockyard worker turned racketeer. After rising from the bottom to the top, he eventually meets his match when the ever-dreaded "concerned citizens" form a vigilante group called The Secret Six. Despite the title, the Six figure into the plot very little and look positively ridiculous with their little silly masks on. Aside from being a nifty (and non-Warner Bros) gangster picture, it's interesting today for its supporting cast which includes Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, and Johnny Mack Brown, as well as the screen debut of Ralph Bellamy. Gable shines in his role. Lewis Stone is great as a gentlemanly attorney/crime boss (what would Judge Hardy say?!?). Wallace Beery is good fun as Scorpio, bringing a bit of humor to an otherwise serious film. It doesn't hurt that he was a bit of a bruiser in real life, so it's easy to buy him as a gangster. He has most of the movie's quotable lines. It's a good watch, especially if you love the old gangster pictures of the 1930s. This one isn't as gritty as many of the WB classics of the era (the vigilantes here only want to bring the criminals to trial, not kill them), but it is entertaining thanks to George Hill's nice direction and a terrific cast.

Despite the title, the Secret Six (a group of masked crime-fighting citizens) don't have much to do in this gangster thriller. On the other hand, it's a chance to see a young Clark Gable just a few years before MGM promoted him to super-stardom. As a probing newspaperman, he's billed way down in the cast list but gets more than ample time to show off his acting chops. Another surprise is Ralph Bellamy before he was sentenced to a life of losing the girl in countless comedies as an urbane mobster -- and he's surprisingly menacing. The star of the movie is Wallace Beery as a slaughterhouse worker turned mob boss and he does his usual job, growling, grimacing and chewing the scenery. Well worth watching in a genre that MGM usually left to Warner Bros.

Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way but I don't think the Secret Six had very much to do with the story. Quite late in the picture the masked tribunal is introduced as the greatest force for law and order in the country, formed to go up against the power of gangsters run amok. Once they come on the scene though they're gone just as quickly. Oh well, the title sounded cool anyway.For all it's inconsistencies and outright gaffes though, this was a pretty entertaining picture. An opening scene shows 'Slaughterhouse' Scorpio (Wallace Beery) plying his trade by using a sledgehammer, presumably to whack a side of beef to death. Shortly after, he's shown leaving the plant with one of his buddies, and they're both dressed in suits and ties! Think about that one for a minute.I'm not saying it's impossible, but the way Scorpio made his way up the ranks of the mob world seemed pretty peculiar to me, especially since his IQ seemed to place him at the lower end of the scale. I cracked up when he took out gang member Johnny Franks (Ralph Bellamy) with a burst of machine gun fire and when the camera panned back to him he was holding a revolver! Better yet, when reporter Hank Rogers (Johnny Mack Brown) filed his story with The Tribune, he stated that Franks had three bullets in his back. How did he know? Say, did you catch the signage at Franks Steak House after Scorpio took over - 'Eighteenth Amendment Strictly Observed"! Just like a bootlegger to flaunt his support of Prohibition. I wouldn't have minded trying his twenty five cent chili though, I bet it was pretty good.Well forget about the screwball stuff for a minute, this film has a cast list that would be the envy of most films of the era. Besides those already mentioned you have Lewis Stone, Jean Harlow, and Clark Gable, and they're just some of the supporting players. This might be the earliest picture I've seen Clark Gable in and it was uncanny how much he resembled a young George Clooney - check it out. Or if you're watching a Clooney flick, maybe he looks like a young Clark Gable - it works both ways.As an early gangster flick, this MGM picture doesn't quite measure up to the ones Warner Brothers put out the same year 1931 - "Little Caesar" and "The Public Enemy", but I'd still recommend a viewing to see all the principals at work. You have to see the look on Scorpio's face when he knows he'll get the chair for his misdeeds, it's enough to write Grandma and Aunt Emma home about.

What we have here is an early gangster movie: we follow several lives over a few years, all linked to a crass slaughterhouse worker. He had the same job as Bardem's character in "No Country for Old Men," but uses a sledgehammer. He rises in the ranks, assumes the position of mayor and is taken down after an exclusive run where everyone is paid off.Made during prohibition, the movie gives some insight into the makeup of the gangs. Prohibition was mainly a racist, anti-immigrant movement, something like the ugliness we see today. The gangs were a social countermovement with distinctly old world character. So there are two story elements, folded. But the thing is primitive cinematically, and not of interest. But it has one remarkable cinematic puzzle.The gang wins for most of the movie. Law enforcement is thwarted at every turn. Eventually "the law" finds its own strategy: bond together as a gang themselves. Thus the "secret six" are formed. Presumably, their identities must be kept secret to prevent being rubbed out. Here we have two strange ideas: that it takes a gang to counter a gang, and that secrecy is key. We actually see them twice, which is when the strange thing occurs.These guys are in a room with several "non-secret" law enforcement guys. All six wear blindfolds. Now it is obvious why: with cinema still this young, you could get away with this shorthand. It is a device that tells you the nature of the secrecy. It tells you a lot visually. It makes no sense in the real world, none at all. But it is an easily readable cinematic shorthand. We wouldn't allow it today.Building on this is a background character. Our primary witnesses in this are newspaper reporters as usual for the period. But they are supplemented by a gangster gopher who is dumb. Turns out he isn't.Swing jazz plays through the whole thing without a break.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.