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6.2/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.2/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. The Big Shakedown remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you have an hour to spare and want to see how wild movies got right before the censors ruined all the fun, The Big Shakedown is absolutely worth your time today. Crime movie buffs will eat this up, but if you want something slow and artistic, you are gonna hate it. 🧪
It is a fast, dirty little story about what bootleggers did when Prohibition ended and they suddenly needed a new hustle. Instead of beer, they start making fake medicine.
Ricardo Cortez plays the main bad guy, Barnes, and he has this incredibly greasy grin that makes you want to wash your hands. He tricks a nice young pharmacist named Jimmy (played by Charles Farrell) into mixing up cheap, fake cosmetics in his backroom.
Jimmy just wants to marry his sweetheart, Norma, who is played by a very young, very stressed-out Bette Davis. She does not have a ton to do here, but she has this one scene in a hospital bed where she looks so genuinely terrified it actually hurts to watch.
There is a real grit to these early Warner Bros. films that you do not get in other studio pictures from the era. It has a similar energy to The Secret 6, where the underworld just feels incredibly close to normal life.
My favorite character is easily Glenda Farrell, who plays a sassy spitfire named Lily. She talks so fast you might miss half her lines if you blink.
There is this one great moment where a guy tries to act tough and she just rolls her eyes so hard I thought they would get stuck. 🙄
The movie does get a bit clumsy in the middle, though. The transition from "making cheap face cream" to "killing babies with bad baby formula" happens so fast it gives you whiplash.
It feels like the writers realized they only had 60 minutes and needed to make things tragic immediately.
Some of the sets look like they were built in about ten minutes out of cardboard. In one office scene, you can actually see a shadow of the camera crew moving on the wall.
But that is what makes these old movies so fun to watch. They were cranked out like sausages, and you can feel that raw, rushed energy in every single frame.
If you want a double feature of weird 1930s stuff, maybe pair this with something like Broadway Daddies for more vintage drama.
It is not a masterpiece, but it has got a lot of teeth. Just watch out for the scene with the baby formula—it gets surprisingly dark.
IMDb —
1921
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