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Dead End |  | Director: William Wyler
Actors: Earl Askam, Wendy Barrie, Don "Red" Barry, Humphrey Bogart, Ward Bond
Studio: Cheezy Flicks Ent
Category: DVD
List Price: $4.95
Buy New: $1.00
as of 2/10/2010 05:08 EST details
You Save: $3.95 (80%)
New (9) from $1.00
Seller: cheezydistribution
Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 91915
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: Unrated
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 93 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: PEGDCF53D
UPC: 827421000538
EAN: 0827421000538
ASIN: B000AYELJC
Theatrical Release Date: 1937
Release Date: December 5, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Studio: Music Video Dist Release Date: 06/24/2008
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 38
 Gem Of A Moral January 26, 2010
Timothy J. Arnold (Rancho Bernardo, CA)
Without adding yet another critique of the actors, limits of the soundstage, and story recap that too many seem bent on reprising...I would just like to make the observation that this story was refreshingly unique compared to some similar productions that I would label as pro-FDR/New Deal propaganda. While some of Hollywood's preachier attempts alluded to the notion that the Federal Government would be the "Big Brother" (CCC, NRA, WPA) taking care of the people who were/are either too poor or stupid to take care of themselves, Dead End clearly illustrates the simple truth that "we" (the people) are our brother's keeper. Not "them" (the government).
Some people today could benefit from the moral of this film. "Joe Architect" (McCrea) does the right thing. He doesn't keep his yap shut and look the other way when a crime is about to go down. He steps up and incidentally ends up taking out the murderous weasels (Bogart/Jenkins) as well as playing an active role in the lives of his neighbors in trouble (Sydney/Halop), giving of HIS time and money to better their lives. THAT is the mark of a better society. The generosity of it's people...not the feckless waste of it's government.
Cradle Of Crime December 30, 2009
Tom Without Pity (A Major Midwestern Metropolis)
This is a review for the video tape edition of DEAD END (1937) which is now
listed as an HBO Home Video product but was originally released by MGM for Samuel Goldwyn Productions directed by William Wyler from a hit Broadway play by Sidney Kingsley, screenplay by Lillian Hellman.
This lively look at tenement life during the Great Depression was originally intended
to give middle class audiences a glimpse of slum life and the people striving to find ways out of this unnamed New York City neighborhood. I'm sure that it was shocking in its time but now is looked upon as almost a work of grimy nostalgia, maybe not a pleasent memory but still a simpler time compared to ours.
I think that the main reason for interest in this film today is because it has one of the earlier movie performances of Humphrey Bogart in his gangster mode, a few years
before he hit it big in HIGH SIERRA and broke through to major stardom in THE MALTESE FALCON and especially CASABLANCA.
But Bogie isn't the only attraction in this film, it was the debut of the Dead End Kids, junior hoods with hearts of gold who made a mountain of gold in thier literally dozens of pictures for more than a couple of Hollywood studios over the next twenty years.
And DEAD END marks noteworthy performances by Joel McCrea, Claire Trevor, Wendy Barrie, Allen Jenkins and quite a few other fine performers who had successful
film careers.
All in all, DEAD END is a succesful, entertaining movie, the only reason I did not give it five stars is that DEAD END is stagebound, betraying its theatrical origins.
with a set that is a spectacular constructon job but everything is confined to that set and even the different camera set ups used by director William Wyler can't disguise the fact that we haven't moved from the same location in over an hour and a half, eventually.
Now I know that set is pretty much the entire world to most of the characters but
a few brief scenes elsewhere in the city would've made me, at least, a little less restless. Which is why I have given this major film release of 1937 four stars.
There are reasons to give DEAD END a higher rating but the stagebound atmosphere takes
away some of pleasure of watching a film which could've used a touch more realism.
By the way, I have owned this videotape since 1998, it was bought used from a video rental store and I have had not one problem with it.
Lives Collide at Various Dead Ends June 6, 2009
Martin Asiner (Jersey City, NJ)
When DEAD END was released in 1937, it received four Oscars including one for best picture. It didn't win but the power that was present in every scene is as noteworthy now as then. Residents of New York often overlook that they live on an island--no matter where they turn eventually they hit a dead end. Director William Wyler applied this dead end as both a symbol and metaphor for the various collisions of lives that intersect at the edges of the East River. There are the dirt poor who can never leave. The Bowery Boys (Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Billy Hallop) are a resident gang of teenage punks who live only to act as predators on helpless victims or to idolize older miscreants who have gone to reform school, lived a high life of crime, and have returned to their origins. Humphrey Bogart is one such but in his case, he desires anonymity. He is wanted by the police, has had plastic surgery to hide his features, but returns to reconnect to his mother (Marjorie Main) and a previous girlfriend (Claire Trevor). Both attempts end disastrously. Bogart's accomplice in crime Hunk (Alan Jenkins) warns him that in life, one must never look back, only forward. This adumbration becomes the film's subtext. Those who seek to return to the Way Things Were are foredoomed to defeat. Sylvia Sidney is Trina, a hard-working decent young woman who loves Dave (Joel McRea), who desires another (Wendy Barrie), herself a former lower class resident who seeks to marry into money. Trina's brother (Garbiel Dell) is wanted by the police on an assault charge, and she must decide whether flight with him is the answer. Bogart as the vicious gangster is the center of both plot and theme. It is he who attracts the others by forcing them to respond to his antiquated notion that one can indeed Go Home Again. He can't, of course, and neither can they. DEAD END is an early masterpiece that presents the grittiness of a hardscrabble existence that demands that everyone make the same choice as did Bogart. That he failed does not invalidate the efforts of others to succeed. DEAD END ends as a celebration of the realization that perhaps Bogart was not wrong to try in the first place.
I DIDN'T GET THE JOB, SO I'LL GO AFTER BABY FACE AND COMPANY February 14, 2009
Cheryl D. Robinson (WAUKEGAN, IL USA)
DAVE WAS UPSET, BECAUSE HE DIDN'T GET THE JOB THAT DAY. BABY FACE HAD
SO MUCH AS CALLED HIM AN "IDIOT", BECAUSE HE HAD SIX YEARS OF COLLEGE
AND WAS "STARVING". I GUESS ALL OF THAT CROSSED HIS MIND, SO HE WENT AFTER BABY FACE AND FRIEND. HOW DID HE GET THE BEST OF NOT ONE, BUT
TWO TOUGH GANSTERS?
 A Slice Of '30s Life In The Lower East Side February 6, 2009
Craig Connell (Lockport, NY USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"Gangs" and "juvenile delinquents" sure have changed. These kids, called "The Dead End Kids," were the poor, tough kids from tough neighborhoods of the Lower East Side in New York City in the 1930s. They are not to be confused with today's "gang bangers" which their drive-by shootings, drug use, etc. Times change.......not always for the better.
If you haven't seen this movie but saw "Angels with Dirty Faces," you've seen these kids. James Cagney and Pat O'Brien starred in that movie and the kids were an integral part of the story.
The same holds true here with Joel McCrea, Slyvia Sidney and Humphrey Bogart being the "adult" stars of this crime-drama-comedy-social commentary.. They, and other adult actors, are in most of the scenes but the kids are "introduced" and went on to be in a number of films, several of them becoming well-known names.
Sure, it's dated, talky compared to today's fare, and too stagy, but it's still interesting and a powerful story in parts. Some people complain and call it "preachy" in parts but if the "preaching" is common sense and decency, what's wrong with that?
Bogart fans will particularly like this because he gives one of his best performances of the 1930s. A mid-20s-in age Claire Trevor ("Francey") gives a memorable short performance, too.
All in all, nothing super but a decent piece of New York City Americana, if you will.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 38
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