Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

PlatinumRead Just so...so bad

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

bkoganbing The Big Shakedown has Ricardo Cortez looking for a new racket for his mob now that Prohibition is a thing of the past. While in Charles Farrell's drugstore Farrell says to Cortez that a whole lot of things that are sold can be easily counterfeited and he has the chemical know how to do it. As it is Farrell and fiancé and soon to be wife Bette Davis are barely keeping their heads above water with the chain stores moving in. Farrell and Cortez start manufacturing things like toothpaste, cosmetics, various other things you find in pharmacies.But when they start manufacturing their own cut rate pharmaceuticals Farrell balks, but he's in way too deep. This film definitely belongs to Ricardo Cortez. He is really a piece of work even keeping two women on a string Glenda Farrell and Renee Whitney. Featured in the film is a chick fight between the two of them over Cortez whom if these women thought about would have dumped him. It ends badly for one of them. Allen Jenkins and Dewey Robinson make a fine pair of pharmaceutical salesmen.Bette Davis is here and puts whatever life she can into her role as Farrell's faithful wife. But this was one of those thankless parts that Warner Brothers gave her in the beginning.The Big Shakedown is a decent enough B drama, but my big question here is where was the Food and Drug Administration while all this was going on?

MikeMagi Back in the days when stardom meant signing a seven-year contract, Bette Davis didn't have much choice but to play the wife of a struggling pharmacist, who gets mixed up with the mob, in this mellerdrama. Hubby Charles Farrell is conscripted by gangster Ricardo Cortez to make counterfeit products like tooth paste and face powder. But when Cortez demands cheap knock-offs of high-priced medication, lives are in danger...Bette's included. She plays the ingénue role surprisingly well without the tics and mannerisms which would mark (and sometimes mar) her later career. Tall, handsome Charles Farrell, on the other hand, couldn't act. To say that he had two expressions is putting it generously. Fortunately, Cortez as the suave hood behind the counterfeiting scheme takes up the slack and Glenda Farrell drops seductively by as a gun moll who knows too much. A pretty entertaining B movie made moreso by the youthful Bette Davis.

utgard14 Pharmacist Charles Farrell goes into business with gangster Ricardo Cortez making counterfeit toothpaste and cosmetics. Soon Cortez wants to branch out into making medication, which Farrell isn't happy about. But Farrell wants to marry fiancée Bette Davis and give her financial security. Early Bette flick before she had really developed her style. She's fine but there's not a lot for her to do through most of the picture but worry about her guy. Charles Farrell is OK. Ricardo Cortez is a great bad guy as usual. Nice supporting cast includes Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins, and Henry O'Neill. Fun cat fight between Glenda Farrell and Renee Whitney. Exciting climax you will not be able to predict!

e_imdb-64 Although this is typical of the low-budget quickies that Warners churned out like hotcakes in the Thirties it offers Bette Davis in her most youthfully appealing "down-to-earth platinum blonde girl" phase. You can find the same character in THREE ON A MATCH, THE GIRL FROM 10TH AVENUE, THE PETRIFIED FOREST and others. She exudes an innocent but intelligent, unaffected femininity that seems to have evaporated by the time she hit her stride with JEZEBEL, so it's good that this phase of her career is preserved - if only to track her evolution as an actress. Note the energy and vitality she injects (perhaps effortlessly) into a supporting role as the girlfriend-wife, stealing every scene she's in - without relying on conventional beauty. It's kind of fun also to see how the scenarists managed to leap from one implausible, contrived plot development to the next - but that's a secondary matter because most of these films were beyond belief. The point was to make a moral point, not to be narratively convincing. The point here being: evil gangsters, beware of the authorities because they'll get you!