“Get yourself another messenger girl.”

Drake’s rating: Ginchy. Not the ginchiest, but still ginchy.

Drake’s review: Chuck Wheeler’s the man with the plan, see? But he’s no square, so his plan means grabbing some of that lettuce flowing through Vegas and punching it down to Mexico before the coppers can nab him. But Wheeler can’t fly solo on a job this big, so he corrals bigshot Joe Darren and Vi Victor, the old lady of his buddy Mike who’s doin’ a nickel in the pen, to give him a hand. Vi’s the scout, see? She gets to use her peepers instead of her gams while Wheeler plans the bash. But then Mike goes AWOL and brings the heat, and Wheeler has to play it cool or else they’re all gonna climb that six-foot ladder.

So if you understood any of that, then you just might enjoy Guns, Girls, and Gangsters, a low-budget B-movie starring Mamie Van Doren (Sex Kittens Go to College) as a showgirl who gets neck-deep in trouble thanks to the no-good men in her life. One of those men is her husband Mike (Lee Van Cleef, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) who sits out the first two acts of the movie as he’s still behind bars. The other men are nightclub owner Joe Darren (Grant Richards, Twelve Hours to Kill), who employs Vi as a singer and showgirl, and Chuck Wheeler (Gerald Mohr, The Angry Red Planet), Mike’s former cellmate, who is concocting a plan to rob an armored car outside of Las Vegas. Joe buys into the plan, with its promise of a huge payoff, and a reluctant Vi is dragged into it as well.

But Wheeler’s plans threaten to go awry when Mike escapes from prison and comes looking for his wife. It seems Vi had written him and told him she was going to get a divorce, with the intention of being south of the border before Mike’s release in three months. But Mike isn’t exactly the understanding type, so he makes a break for it with vengeance in mind. And it’s just going to be too bad if Joe and Wheeler get in his way…

Guns, Girls, and Gangsters is a breezy 70-minute flick that no doubt played on a double-bill at many a drive-in in 1959. Filled with seasoned talent from top to bottom, it glides along smoothly as a simple story centering around Vi as she tries to navigate through the troubles that come barreling her way. Mamie Van Doren had the “tough dame” role down to a science by this point, and this part is right up her alley. It’s an effort ably assisted by Mohr, a veteran actor who had been working in films and radio since the late 1930’s. It’s all fairly basic, but Mohr still gets just a tad cheeky and occasionally slips in a Humphrey Bogart mannerism, a sly wink to anyone in the passion pit* who might remember Bogey from an old movie their parents dragged them to.

With no budget to spare to flesh out the film, Guns, Girls, and Gangsters relies on a narrator to tell us all about LAS VEGAS! and the piles of COLD, HARD CASH! flowing through the casinos, as well as what Wheeler’s up to and, well, anything else that can be told rather than shown. It’s a bit clunky, sure, but at the same time it almost feels like audible captions from an old comic book, which is honestly the perfect tone for a movie like this. There’s no weighty melodrama here, but its all played straight enough to avoid transforming into camp.

Honestly? I had a good time watching this one. Guns, Girls, and Gangsters was certainly nothing revolutionary, but it is a pretty darn good crime flick with no pretensions to be anything else. Eyeball this flick, dreamboats and dollies! That is, if you’re not getting your kicks playing back seat bingo.

*AKA the drive-in, Daddy-O!

Intermission!

• Gerald Mohr was the original Mr. Fantastic! Mohr was the voice of Reed Richards in the Fantastic Four cartoon that ran from 1967-68.
• Jack Baker, who staged Mamie Van Doren’s song & dance numbers for Guns, Girls, and Gangsters, was not only the choreographer for numerous beach movies of the ‘60s, but also choreographed the episode of The Addams Family (“Lurch Learns to Dance”) that has provided countless internet GIFs and memes sixty years after its premiere.
• Director Edward L. Cahn’s career started during the Silent Era, when he worked as an editor on several films, including the classic The Man Who Laughs. As a director he helmed over 100 films, including my first Mutant Review, Dragstrip Girl.
• 1959 was a buy year for Mamie Van Doren, with five films hitting the screens, including the MST3K favorite Girls Town. When her career stalled a decade later, she toured with the USO during the Vietnam War.