THE DIRTY HALF-DOZEN!!........MOPPIN' UP AFTER "THE GRISSOM GANG"

The Grissom Gang (1971)    BQ dearly loves us some Robert Aldrich......

                 You could always count on two things in Aldrich movies..........

                 #1.  Over the top melodrama..........punctuated, whenever possible, with extreme violence....

                 #2.  Over the top actors working at the very outer edges of their range......usually at the top of their lungs.  (To put it in "This Is Spinal Tap" terms........everybody's dialed up to Eleven......)

                   Aldrich hit the whole country's sweet spot with "The Dirty Dozen"......everybody fell in  love with the premise:  since war is a crazy enterprise, why not have it fought by crazy, violent psychotic criminals.

                  Audiences drooled with joy and the success of the film made Aldrich rich enough to buy his very own movie studio, complete with a couple of sound stages.....

                   But his subsequent forays in overblown grotesque melodrama ("The Legend of Lylah Clare", "The Killing Of Sister George"), found little favor with critics or moviegoers.  Unlike the rollicking doomed goons of "The Dirty Dozen", nobody found the characters in these films (or their stories)  even remotely appetizing.

                   And yet Aldrich was just getting warmed up......unleashing the most cartoonishly overacted bloodbath of his career in "The Grissom Gang".....

                  Adapted from an old British crime thriller and plopped down into Depression-era Kansas, "The Grissom Gang" puts a high-strung, neurotic debutante (Kim Darby) in the clutches of an outlaw brood who make Bonnie and Clyde look like the couple in the 'American Gothic' painting.

                   Smitten at first sight by his kidnapped prize is the Grissoms' most unhinged, murderous man-child, Slim (Scott Wilson). And so begins a kind of King Kong/Fay Wray relationship between this Beauty and her Beast......

                   The rest of the hot-tempered Grissoms go about their business of shooting and stabbing just about everyone they encounter, including themselves...........by the time all this Grindhouse gristle 'n gore grinds to a halt after 2 hours, there's hardly anyone left alive.......(not that you'd care by that point....)

                   But what a weird Aldrich-ian ride it takes you on.......filmed in dazzling bright MetroColor and operatically performed by the cast as if they're playing to the cheapest seats in the upper decks of an NFL stadium.........(special props to Irene Dailey as madwoman Ma Grissom, whose visible mustache comes and goes from shot to shot......and shrieks for joy while she's machine-gunning platoons of cops....)

                   Though Aldrich labored like the ultimate Hollywood workhorse,  audiences for raw, rough items like "The Grissom Gang" dropped off sharply........forcing him to sell off his own movie studio......(they happily re-assembled however, for his "The Longest Yard" in 1974, a film closer in spirit to "The Dirty Dozen")

                   For pure, unadulterated Aldrich, you can't do better than join up with "The Grissom Gang" for a couple of blistering, bloody housrs.........you won't see anything like it from any other director......3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)