Bad Company

One of the toughest of the early gangster films, “Bad Company” has more in common with the underplayed and callous crime films of Rowland Brown than with the more traditional and spectacular films of Hawks, Wellman and LeRoy.  It seems at first to be wholly a dialogue film, but it maintains a brittle and brisk pace, and is full of surprises, as in the German expressionistic style of the waterfront sequence.  Its slam bang action climax is all the more effective for being unexpected.  “Bad Company” is virtually unknown, but quite undeservedly so.

(William K. Everson 10/4/74)