Jim I did enjoy the movie, and found it especially interesting because it was based on a true story. My rating would be based mostly on the fact that it was not a fictional story. Many of the actors were old familiar faces that I've seen so many times over the years on television and the movies. The acting by the more established actors was reasonably good, while the performances by some of the lesser or unknown actors left something to be desired.After watching it, I thought I would see if I could find out some more facts about the whole incident. I did some research on John Malcom Patterson (son of the murdered father) and found out that he eventually became the governor of Alabama. The article on Wikipedia about him, especially about his time as governor just prior to George Wallace, sheds a different light on the man who was the hero of the story. It was a bit disappointing to read these negative things about him.

secondtake The Phenix City Story (1955)Wow, this one came from nowhere and blew me away. It's a rough and tumble, unbelievably violent, true story of a block in a little town in Alabama where gambling and corruption ruled and where some local people were failing to fight back.It begins with a very long (too long) series of interviews of real people involved in the very real story of Phenix City, on the border with Georgia. I would actually recommend skipping it--almost twenty minutes that was not in the original release of the movie--and start with the drama, which is dramatic above all. This is no film noir, but it's shot in that moody, graphic style, which is perfect. The bad guys--including both a ruthless mob leader with no class at all and a tough and reactionary henchman who gets away with murder--are a classic Southern good old boys network. The cops are in on the whole scheme, and this mini-Vegas runs with impunity, thriving mostly off the money of soldiers from a nearby army base. It's all extremely convincing, small time crookery.The good guys--and women, one woman working at a gambling joint being a key insider witness--are equally convincing and small time. There is no Bogart or Mitchum or Lancaster in the leading role, though the father son lawyer pair who eventually lead the resistance are familiar faces: John McIntire and Richard Kiley (Kiley had been doing a lot of early t.v. but was also in "Pickup on South Street"). You might expect a familiar battle between the forces of good and evil, with tensions and violence and the eventual triumph of justice. And while the end of the gambling joints (after 80 years) is a matter of history, it takes so many really awful and gut wrenching turns it's riveting. I mean, this movie is like no other in terms of facing the facts--sometimes that person who would never get bumped off in a Hollywood script does actually die in real life.And this is real life, scripted and filmed and acted and edited with the vigor of a great drama, but based on the ugly truth of it, and not looking the other way. Don't miss it.

ptb-8 Yikes! This terrific tabloid thriller from Allied Artists in 1955 filmed while corruption and prostitution trials were still happening is an extraordinary tough film. Possibly it is the most violent 50s film I have ever seen. Other comments on this site will tell you the story and it is well worth reading all you can about this startling and very frank docu drama about the crime and mob rule by unscrupulous men in this Alabama town. Directed by no nonsense Phil Karlson, a regular from Monogram-Allied Artists and packed with sleazy vice and fist pumping brutality, THE PHENIX CITY STORY is a revelation in 50s crime noir drama. The prologue for me added genuine creepiness to the reality with actual witnesses interviewed and their vocal twang and unrehearsed authenticity had me paying close attention. For a town riddled with vice and prostitution and all the realities of what bad men want, did anyone notice that the vice king's name was Tanner? Also, on actor's first name was Biff... put'em together and you get BIFF TANNER as in the bad guy from the BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy who leads the town into vice and corruption in that Spielberg Series. THE PHENIX CITY STORY would have been a research issue for the 'town gone bad' storyline of BACK TO THE FUTURE PART 2 (as was IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE) and I can see how a composite name for the bad guy was easily joined to make BIFF TANNER. It is then altered slightly to make BIFF TANNEN in BTF. Various crime scenes and bloody fights in PHENIX CITY STORY are absolutely shocking and over all the film has an atmosphere of complete southern authenticity because of Karlson's able direction filming in actual location with the real people of the town. A film Student must-see and a crime drama of astonishing bluntness. Richard Kiley is excellent as the ordinary man forced to become tougher than he ever expected. There are terrific roles for a dignified Negro family whose daughter is central to one of the most horrifying scenes in any film ever. For an immersing experience into the vice riddled deep south of the 1950s THE PHENIX CITY STORY will do it.

bkoganbing I'm surprised that more people are not aware of this story which climaxed with no less than the murder of the Democratic nominee for Attorney General of Alabama at the time when said nomination was tantamount to election. That the election of Albert Patterson scared the local criminal syndicate into that kind of move is almost unprecedented. The only other example I can think of something like this occurring was in the early years of the last century when Special Prosecutor Francis J. Heney was shot and wounded while he was investigated the corrupt city machine in San Francisco.After a brief documentary introduction by CBS news reporter Clete Roberts of actual Phenix City residents, the story begins with the Pattersons, father John McIntire and son Richard Kiley getting reluctantly involved in the fight to clean up their town which is notorious for being a wide open cesspool of vice and corruption. It's pointed out that Phenix City is across from Columbus, Georgia and thirty minutes from Fort Benning. A certain amount of vice and corruption will inevitably settle there in towns that cater to the military and the pleasures the service people will seek off duty.But Phenix City has gotten way out of hand and it's become a state embarrassment to the people of Alabama. Which is why John McIntire wins that primary leading the way to the unheard of events that followed. Let's just say that what happens here was contemplated, but never done in Chicago during the days of Al Capone.The cast also includes Kathryn Grant as a young woman working as an informer in one of the clubs, Lenka Patterson as Kiley's loyal, but concerned wife, Edward Andrews and John Larch as brains and muscle behind the syndicate. It also includes James Edwards and Helen Martin whose child is killed when Edwards helps Kiley. With I might add the appropriate feeling one might have for a small black girl in Alabama of the Fifties.After the action of this film John Patterson took his dad's place as Attorney General and did put an end to the corruption of Phenix City. In 1958 he ran for Governor and won, but contrary to what you might think ran on a strict segregationist platform. His main primary opponent taking the more moderate racial position was George C. Wallace. That never happened again, Wallace saw to that.And Patterson is still alive and in 2008 was a supporter of Barack Obama for president. Truth can really be stranger than fiction.The Phenix City Story is a hard hitting, pulling no punches documentary style of a family's fight against corruption. Try to see it when next broadcast.