Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 26, 2015

Many, maybe even most, directors who have ever toiled in the wild and wooly scene of independent films yearn for the luxe budgets and more relaxed shooting schedules that a well financed studio picture offers. Not so Roger Corman. Corman, an iconoclast who rather unexpectedly delivered one towering smash after another throughout the 1960s for the “little studio that could,” American International Pictures, suddenly found his ticket punched for the supposed big leagues after years of successes which included everything from his vaunted Edgar Allan Poe adaptations (available on Blu-ray in The Vincent Price Collection and The Vincent Price Collection II) to what was in 1967 the relatively recent box office bonanza generated by The Wild Angels. When 20th Century Fox came calling, offering Corman what for him was an outsized budget and a supposed free hand to craft a film based on one of the most notorious gangland turf wars in American history, it may have seemed like, if not figurative manna from heaven, at the very least an incredible opportunity which was simply too lucrative to pass up. Corman soon found out that when there is a major Hollywood studio footing the bill, there are typically major Hollywood studio bean counters and other honchos rather desperately looking over the shoulders of any given film’s creative team, and Corman, despite evidently bringing in The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre rather substantially under budget, couldn’t tolerate the meddling of higher ups, not to mention what Corman perceived as the profligate tendencies of the big studio system in general. The resulting film is an odd study in contrasts. One can almost feel Corman’s anachronistic, independent tendencies pushing back against the strictures of a glossier, more staid template, with the upshot (no pun intended) being a somewhat wobbly narrative and an at times wildly veering tone.

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre wants to be taken seriously as a “ripped from the headlines” quasi-documentary, and in the beginning at least, Corman opts for a bit of restraint, letting some (pretty ubiquitous) narration set the stage as only the sound of rampant gunfire alerts the viewer—and a couple of onscreen passersby—that some calamity is taking place in a Chicago garage. However, it soon becomes clear that Corman wants to provide regular adrenaline rushes courtesy of relatively graphic depictions of violence, even if those depictions tend to interrupt the main narrative flow of the film, often diverting it into odd vignettes that come courtesy of various flashbacks.

If the actual massacre is teased in the film’s opening sequence, there are a number of interstitial skirmishes on display until Corman returns to the “scene of the crime” for the extremely bloody finale, one of the more viscerally intense sequences Corman orchestrated. The main conflict in the film, and the one which eventually spills over into the central carnage the film’s title alludes to, is between Al Capone (Jason Robards) and Bugs Moran (Ralph Meeker). Both want control of Chicago’s lucrative underground bootlegging business which has sprung up in the wake of Prohibition. The film’s nonstop narration actually makes it clear just how incredibly large the underground alcohol business really was in Chicago in the 1920s, making this turf battle a matter of some import and potentially very big bucks.

Screenwriter Howard Browne attempts to shorthand the proceedings courtesy of that ubiquitous narration (voiced by Paul Frees), a gambit that tends to interrupt the film as much as it helps, especially when any given gangster is introduced with a little factoid that seems to be prepping the audience for some future mobster edition of Trivial Pursuit. Once the introductions are (largely) out of the way, the film still occasionally stumbles as it attempts to provide backstory for the feud between Moran and Capone. Two competing flashback vignettes boil down to a “he said, he said” conflict in terms of who started what and who is therefore to blame for the current state of dysfunction.

In his brief recollection included on this Blu-ray as a supplement, Roger Corman confirms that he did indeed want Orson Welles for the role of Al Capone, but the vagaries of fate (and show business) gave him a supposedly miscast Jason Robards instead. Robards isn’t pugnacious (physically or behaviorally) the way the real life Capone evidently was, but he’s rather surprisingly vicious at various turns in the story, spitting out lines and seeming to be on the verge of erupting into real violence. Meeker is actually rather restrained, at least relatively speaking, as Moran. In a large and somewhat unwieldy supporting cast, George Segal is appropriately despicable as Peter Gusenberg, a guy who is spitting hooch at a speakeasy proprietor one minute and then beating up his girlfriend the next.

Corman goes for the gusto in the final, tragic (in more ways than one) shootout, linking this film in an odd kind of way to his American International horror outings. There's no dearth of bright (almost Hammer Films-esque) red blood, but this time the carnage is divorced from the fanciful Freudian underpinnings that informed many of the Poe adaptations.

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.37:1. From a damage perspective, the elements are in very good condition, with only very minor damage showing up. The color is another matter, though. Perhaps original elements were not available, or at the least whatever was available had faded badly, for this has the look of a heroic effort in a telecine bay to establish something close to the original palette, to varying effect. Most of the film is at least slightly on the pallid side, and in the two flashbacks that set up various shootouts early in the film, things are pallid almost to the point of things looking like a colorized black and white film. Flesh tones tilt toward brown throughout the film, but can look healthy at times (see screenshots 17 and 3). Detail is commendable, with no problems resolving busy patterns like herringbone checks on suit jackets and the like. Fine detail is very good in close-ups. There are no issues with image instability. The rather heavy grain field resolves naturally and there are no signs of excessive digital intrusion, other than whatever efforts were made to stabilize the color.

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix which provides some surprising bombast when the soundtrack erupts into gunfire. Dialogue is very cleanly presented, and the film's propulsive score (credited to Lionel Newman, but evidently including work by Fred Steiner as well) sounds fine. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is quite wide. There are no problems with drop outs or any other kind of damage.

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Roger Corman Remembers (1080p; 3:31) is a brief but interesting reminiscence by Corman. The Corman interview segments look like they're sourced from old video.


• Fox Movietone News (480i; 4:41) offers some archival footage of figures like Al Capone.


• Original Theatrical Trailer (480i; 2:32)


• Isolated Score Track is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It gets a little hard to square The St. Valentine's Day Massacre's quasi-verité ambience with its more overheated, potboiler elements, but that's also part of what gives this film its peculiar ambience. Robards becomes increasingly unhinged as Capone as the film progresses, pushing things perhaps unwisely toward camp a couple of times. Still, Corman creates a visceral intensity throughout this film, and he's certainly completely in control of the film's pace and framings. Probably best enjoyed as something of a curio, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre offers good to excellent technical merits and comes Recommended.