The Rise and Fall of Legs Dimaond (1960) Budd Boetticher

In 1957, Allied Artists released a low budget gangster film called, Al Capone, starring Rod Stieger. The film was an immediate hit raking in over one million dollars. Big bucks back then for a low-budget film. The film is notable for starting a new cycle of gangster films that included Pretty Boy Floyd with Leif Erickson, Machine Gun Kelly with Charles Bronson, The Purple Gang with Barry Sullivan and a young Robert Blake, King of the Roaring Twenties with David Jansen, Mad Dog Coll with John David Chandler and Vincent Gardenia, and Portrait of a Mobster with Vic Morrow. There was even a hit TV series, The Untouchables.   Included in this blood shed of works was Budd Boetticher’s The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond.