Not all gangster films are the same

Audiences’ love affair with gangster movies began over a century ago with 1906’s “The Black Hand: True Story of a Recent Occurrence in the Italian Quarter of New York,” considered the earliest surviving movie dealing with the Mafia.

The latest installment in the genre is Ridley Scott’s pulsating “American Gangster,” which opens Friday. Denzel Washington stars as Frank Lucas, a real-life “Superfly,” who left his home in the South and headed for Harlem, where he became a kingpin of the burgeoning heroin trade of the 1970s.

Over the years, there have been classic gangster films such as “The Godfather” trilogy and Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets,” “GoodFellas” and “Casino.” But there also have been some unusual twists on the mob story.

Edward G. Robinson, for example, came to fame with his bravura turn as “Little Caesar” in the 1931 shoot-’em-up. But in 1940, he showed a softer side in the comedy “Brother Orchid,” playing a mob chief who gets wounded in a hit by a rival gang and takes refuge at a monastery. Eventually, the benevolence of the Order of Flowers makes him change his ways: He gives up his life of crime and is re-christened Brother Orchid.

Even Joan Crawford got into the gangster act in 1952’s melodrama “This Woman Is Dangerous.” She’s as tough as nails as Beth Austin, the gal pal of a jealous mobster (David Brian). While in New Orleans to oversee a robbery, she learns she must undergo surgery on her eyes or she’ll go blind.

And in Alan Parker’s 1976 comedy-with-music “Bugsy Malone,” gangsters are played by kids. Scott Baio has the title role as a mobster caught in a power struggle with Fat Sam (John Cassisi) and Dandy Dan (Martin Lev). Jodie Foster is on hand as the moll, Tallulah. Of course, these gangsters didn’t eliminate their victims with a hail of bullets; the mini-mob used “splurge guns” that drenched the rival gangsters in cream. (For more of Hollywood’s atypical gangster films, go to latimes.com/entertainment.)

-- Susan King