A podcast on the Public Enemy Era (1933-1934). Read More…
Jun 222018
Aug 172017
A page listing all of the essays, timelines and movie reviews on the Public Enemy Era (1933-1935). Read More…
Mar 092017
Rating: 
Determined to escape grinding poverty, Katherine Barker leads her four sons on a crime wave. The movie is a strange experience. Even by today’s standards, it is pretty weird. Despite the large number of good character actors, it is a nasty, disturbing film. Read More…
Oct 272016
Rating:
Although the script states that Ma Barker was so cunning that she was never arrested in two decades of crime, the real J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, had labeled Ma the brains of the Barker-Kasrpis Gang in order to avoid the blame for killing an unarmed grandmother. While the script transforms Ma Barker into a criminal mastermind who makes Walter White look like an indecisive bumbler, the overall story is relatively accurate. Emphasis on relatively. Despite the complete disconnect from historical reality, it is a fun movie. Read More…
Jan 302014
When outlaws like the Barker-Karpis Gang, the Clyde Barrow Gang, John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd began to attract national attention in 1933, the FBI was an under-funded, amateurish organization. A series of celebrity kidnappings and the massacre of four law enforcement officials in Kansas City in June 1933 led to calls for a national police force, and the FBI would lead the war on crime. In 1934, the many bank robbers would be divided into five nice, clear groups: the family of kidnappers, the lovers on the run, the charming escape artist, the psychotic killer and the misunderstood country boy. A year later, almost none of them were still alive and the FBI was a national institution.
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