Disappointment for a huge fan!

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

It's a real shame that you cannot buy this most engaging movie any more, as the distributor seems to have gone out of business. "Blood Money" is a really interesting movie, formerly available on an excellent DVD disc, released by Vintage Film Buff, "Blood Money" (1933) was directed with a real punch and considerable style by the super- talented Rowland Brown, who makes the most of an extremely gritty screenplay in which the charismatic George Bancroft plays a bloodsucking bail bondsman and the lovely Frances Dee (of all people) a masochistic, high society floozy. Judith Anderson is also in there pitching as the hero's former glamour interest (!) while the legendary Blossom Seeley sings a couple of Rodgers and Hart numbers.

This is an excellent gritty thriller - just the sort of film you associate with George Bancroft. He plays Bill Bailey, a larger than life bail bondsman and a celebrity among high society and the criminal element. "I make my money off losers" - he makes his money extortingassets off his clients. In one of the first scenes an elderly woman comes to him about helping her young son, once he realises she owns her own house he gets her to leave the deeds with his receptionist. He is that kind of a guy!!!His lady love, Ruby Darling, is played, extraordinarily, by Judith Anderson - she owns a speak-easy, but they have known each other for a long time and are more like husband and wife. She helped him get to his present position of power. She also has a criminal brother, Drury (Chick Chandler), who has just been caught for a bank robbery - if he is found guilty he will go to jail for life on the 3 strikes you're out plan.The big reason to see this film is Frances Dee. She is just a sensation as the "drop dead gorgeous" socialite, Elaine Talbert, who first comes to Bill's attention when she is caught shop-lifting at a big department store. Bill falls for her but it is quite clear something is wrong - she gets a crazy gleam in her eye when she hears about all the crooked things he has had to do in his line of business. You just know when she meets Drury that she is going to fall for him in a big way - after all he has just masterminded a daring bank robbery. Her views about how she likes to be treated by men raise a few eyebrows as well. Nymphomaniac, sado masochist, there is nothing that Elaine won't do - and Frances Dee pulls it off with aplomb. She had already given a superb performance in "The Silver Cord" as a young girl tottering on the brink of madness. It is a pity she was soon to wind down her career in favour of marriage to handsome Joel McCrea but she definitely left some wonderful performances. Because Elaine double crosses Bill (keeping the $50,000 bail money and giving him worthless bonds in exchange) it looks like he has left Drury high and dry so Ruby organises some of the mob to destroy him. She realises her mistake at the end and madly hurries down to the pool hall to save his life (the eight ball has been filled with enough explosive to kill him). Being a pre-code you don't really know what to expect. The real ending is a scream. Elaine, hurrying to Bill after being thrown over by Drury, meets a girl who has been enticed to a man's room with the promise of modelling work. "He threw me around, he bruised my arms and really roughed me up" - Elaine's response "What's the man's name and what room is he in". The gleam in her eye leave you in no doubt that she definitely does not want to report him!!!By the way the girl who is socked at the beginning - "Red's" girl - is the beautiful Noel Francis who played sultry vixens to perfection!! Blossom Seeley, a legendary singer of the time, sings "Frankie and Johnny", "On San Francisco Bay" and "My Melancholy Baby".Highly Recommended.

What a wacky little gem from cult filmmaker Rowland Brown. He got this one in just under the wire. The next year 1934 would see an all-out effort to "clean up the movies", and for the next 30 years audiences would get twin beds, closed-mouth kissing, and no hint of a human vagary that couldn't be shoe-horned into Jack Webb- style law and order or Rock meets Doris type romance. None of that predictable conventionality here. Instead, it's an unapologetic look at a layer of urban life soon to be shoved back into the Legion of Decency's dark closet. Macho bail bondsman George Bancroft works the shady side of the law, dabbling at times in stolen property. Nothing too unusual there. But watch him caress thief Chick Chandler's shoulder even after the latter has moved in on Bancroft's girl, or laugh uproariously at a "sissy" remark thrown his way. He may end up with the bordello madam, but it looks like the law is not the only both-sides-of-the-street he works.Then there's sweet-faced ingénue Frances Dee as the rich girl on-the-make. But it's not Cary Grant or Ralph Bellamy she's hankering for. It's the load of masochistic pain that makes her eyes go all shiny and her voice all quavery. The problem is she can't decide whether it's the brawny thrills of a masterful man or the hip-swiveling charms of a hula girl that attracts her more. There's also the erotic sideline of lifting meaningless articles from downtown stores that sort of fills the day-to-day gaps, to say nothing of a sense of loyalty that sort of comes and goes. She may look like one of those madcap heiresses of the thirties, but the reality is far more Freudian and provocative.And what other movie would dare make a sympathetic sex object out of that hawk-nosed paradigm of female villainy Judith Anderson. Apparently, it was her first film before the gargoyle type-casting that would later take hold. Meanwhile, the slinky gowns and plunging neck-lines are surprisingly effective, even if the facial profile is not exactly that of the classic Hollywood beauty. It's a measure of Brown's humanity, I take it, that her character as a bordello madam comes across as the movie's most sympathetic.Mix these characters into what amounts to an urban inferno and you get a genuine piece of Hollywood exotica, to say nothing of the monocled cross-dresser who dates Chick Chandler's nervy thief, the same guy who hires on not one professional girl for the evening, but two (one of which is an early Lucille Ball). Note too, how easily the shady Bancroft mixes in with the respectable types. First it's an insurance executive, then a shipping magnate, and most conveniently, the city DA, as overworld and underworld blend into a single shape-shifting shade of gray. It's that margin of ambiguity, not only between the sexes, but between the social classes and the law that lies, I believe, at the movie's core. The fluid nature of things is made more apparent by the fact that Brown remains non-judgmental throughout. His characters simply are as they are. Dee is made no less deserving of happiness than anyone else. And in one of the strangest of all Hollywood endings, where Bancroft and Anderson at last find true love, Dee goes gleefully off to another expected masochistic romp, unpunished. Love and lust both triumph here, with no moral distinction drawn at fade-out. And when Bancroft is made to remark that liberals acknowledge human vice and try to control it, whereas conservatives simply turn their backs on its existence, that sounds like Brown speaking. Certainly, he was no conservative in that respect. Hollywood, however, would unfortunately turn their backs on selected reality for the next thirty years, as Brown's all-too-brief career underscores. Too bad. For as the movie shows in its own unorthodox way, his loss was our loss too.

Bail bondsman Bill Bailey's motto is "Bailey for Bail", and he always has a fistful of cash for any felon who needs bail money. Bailey has plenty of friends in the crime world, and plenty of enemies among the city's district attorneys. But most of Bailey's "friends" are strictly the fair-weather type; his only true friend is Ruby Darling, who sees plenty but reveals very little. Bailey and Ruby spend a lot of time going to nightclubs where the women smoke cigars and dress like men.Bailey has got a hot passion for Elaine Talbert (who does NOT dress like a man), but Elaine prefers guys who treat her rough and make her like it. Elaine persuades her boyfriend to steal some financial securities, confident that (if he gets caught) good old Bailey will bail him out.Meanwhile, some of Bailey's gangster pals have decided he's been breathing too long. They invite Bailey to join them at the pool hall for a friendly game of eight-ball. Oh, yeah: everybody but Bailey knows that the eight-ball is full of nitroglycerin ... if Bailey pots the black, he goes boom. Desperately, Ruby races to the pool hall to warn her friend. Will she get there in time to stop Bill Bailey's billiard-ball bomb, or will Bailey end up behind the eight-ball?"Blood Money" is a weird film, strangely fascinating. It was written and directed by Rowland Brown, a brilliant film-maker whose promising career was ruined by his penchant for violence. After punching out several Hollywood producers who got in his way, Brown decided to relocate to England for a fresh start. His credentials and his substantial talent won him the assignment to direct Leslie Howard in "The Scarlet Pimpernel" ... but, once again, a minor disagreement with a producer led to violence, and Brown was blackballed.SPOILERS COMING. "Blood Money" features some strange depictions of 1930s sexuality. There's a mannish woman in the nightclub; she offers Bailey a cigar and calls him a "big cissy". Elsewhere, Bailey bullies a cabdriver and calls him a "fag". (The cabbie is played by beefy Matt McHugh, an actor not usually cast in "swish" roles.) Bailey's love interest Elaine is clearly a sexual masochist, who goads men into beating her. Frances Dee, who usually played virginal good-girl roles, gives the best performance of her career here. At the end of the film, Elaine meets a young woman - weeping, her clothes torn - who has just been beaten and violated by her prospective employer. Elaine asks for the man's address, implying that she'll take action against him ... but, when we see the look of eager delight on her face, we know why she's really going there.Watch for a brief appearance (in the nightclub sequence) by vaudeville star Blossom Seeley, singing a Rodgers and Hart ballad called "The Bad in Every Man". If this obscure song sounds familiar, that's because Richard Rodgers later used the same tune (with a new lyric by Lorenz Hart) as the much better-known song "Blue Moon"."Blood Money"'s climactic scene with the explosive eight-ball is ridiculous, especially since Buster Keaton had already played this same idea for comedy (with an explosive 13-ball) in "Sherlock Junior". But Judith Anderson (later a Dame of the British Empire) plays her role well, despite some corny dialogue, and the eight-ball is defused in an unexpected way. My rating for 'Blood Money': 9 out of 10.