RyothChatty ridiculous rating

PlatinumRead Just so...so bad

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

alexanderdavies-99382 Humphrey Bogart was tiring of playing gangsters in film after film for "Warner Bros." and sought any kind of variation in such vehicles. In "King of the Underworld," his character has a Napoleon fixation and has aspirations to become just like him. The running time helps to keep this minor movie at a reasonable pace. Kay Francis was once a fairly big star but by 1939, her popularity had gone into decline. She is hardly remembered these days but she was a very capable performer. In this movie, she plays a doctor who has no choice but to leave her city practice and set up shop in the countryside. Bogart isn't quite his usual evil, sneering self and his scenes with Francis are quite good. The film doesn't rise above being ordinary but it isn't a terrible film by any means.

Neil Doyle The central role in this low-budget crime melodrama really belongs to KAY FRANCIS, and she makes her lady doctor pretty believable. But it's HUMPHREY BOGART who walks off with the show, which is no more than a programmer made on the cheap, by playing up the comic elements of his character.Bogart is an illiterate man who wants his "genius" to be known. He kidnaps a man (James Stephenson) with a reputation as a writer in order to tell him his life story and make him the "king of the underworld." But Kay Francis spoils all his plans when she has to prove herself innocent of criminal charges pending against her due to a prior event. She fools the hoods into believing they will go blind if they don't let her help them.The story has several implausible script problems and never really comes off as credible. Interesting only to see that Bogart was far more worthy of his early material than the studio realized. And Kay Francis has one of her more believable roles in this crime melodrama.

sol **SPOILER ALERT** Remake of the 1935 Paul Muni comedy crime drama "Doctor Socrates" but a lot more violent with Humphrey Bogart as the delusional crime boss Joe Gurney. Gurney envisions himself as being the Napoleon of the underworld and uses the 19th century French Emperors same strategy of conducting wars to him conducting his gang of hoodlums.Gurney seeing that Dr. Niles Nelson,John Eldredge, did such a good job in patching up one of his gang members offer him a job as his personal physician paying Dr. Nelson as much as $500.00 a visit. All is good and well until the Doc gets gunned down in a police raid as he was treating one of Gurney's hoods. That leaves his totally Innocent wife who's also a doctor, Carole ,Kay Francis, not only wearing the paths in the Nelson family but suspected by the police as being a doctor for the mob and in danger of losing her license to practice medicine.Setting up a practice in the little town of Wayne Center Carole feels that Gurney and his boys will be paying her, or Wayne Center, a visit with one of his gang members being in the town jail. Carole doesn't have to wait too long with the Gurney gang rolling into town the very next day and springing their man from prison. During the violent shoot-out a man in one of Gurney's attack cars is seen fleeing from the scene and shot. The man is later found out not to be a member of Gurney's gang but down and out English writer Bill Stevens, James Stephenson. It turns out that Stevens hitched or was taken for a ride, with him having no say in the matter, with the Gurney Gang not at first knowing that Gurney was the notorious fugitive from the law that he is.Treated by Carole in his prison cell Stevens is later kidnapped by the Gurney Gang in not that he knows that much about their boss' whereabouts but that he was in the process of writing Gurney's autobiography as the man who made it to the top of the heap, in the world of US crime.During the prison breakout Gurney was also hit suffering a nasty bullet wound on his right arm and had two of his hoods kidnap Carole bringing her to their hideout outside town to treat it. Carole does an excellent job dressing and disinfecting Gurney's bullet wound yet the "I don't take orders from a dame" Gurney doesn't take care of himself. This has him get very ill with a high fever from the wound getting reinfected that Gurney has Carole re-kidnapped and taken back again to his hideout in order to treat it.Seeing her chance to help the police and prove that she isn't a member of Gurney's gang Carole has Gurney think that he contacted a serious case of Streptococci on top of all that he also infected his entire gang. Telling the now scared sh*tless Gurney that she'll have to go back to her doctors office and get this ointment to save him and his gang from going blind, due to the Streptococci infection. Carole then secretly tips off the police to not only where Gurney's hideout is but that by midnight, when the ointment that she's to give him and his boys will take effect, they'll all be as blind as a bat and ripe to take into custody without any problem. Carole was only half right with Gurney & Co. going blind but at the same time not going easy but down in a hail of bullets.

Chris Gaskin King of the Underworld features an early role for Humphery Bogart in one of his many gangster roles.He plays Joe Gurney who uses a female doctor to treat his men and pays her for it. He follows her when she goes to live with her Auntie after one of Gurney's men kills her doctor husband who also worked for him. Gurney kidnaps an author on his way to find the female doctor and gets him to write his life story and he then plans to kill him. He finally meets up with the doctor and after she gives Gurney and his men a substance that makes them temporarily blind, she and the author, who have now fallen in love manage to escape just as police arrive...Joing the excellent Bogie in the cast are Kay Francis, James Stephenson and John Eldredge.Watching King of the Underworld is a good way to spend just over an hour one evening.Rating: 3 stars out of 5.