Mad Dog Coll (1961 film)

Mad Dog Coll is a 1961 biographical movie directed by Burt Balaban.

Plot 
The film is a heavily fictionalized treatment of the life of Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll Curran, who was born in 1908 in County Donegal, Ireland. In the film, Coll is depicted as growing up with an abusive father who beats and ridicules him (the film opens with him machine-gunning his father's gravestone), and started a street gang at a very young age, which led in turn to organized crime. He is portrayed as a psychopath, incapable of fear or compassion, who is never more happy than when he is recklessly shooting people with his tommy gun or feuding with the fellow mobster Dutch Schultz over whisky hijacking.  The film ends with Coll being shot down by the police after Schultz puts a contract on him, but in fact he was arrested, tried, released, then later killed by associates of Lucky Luciano because he was making too much trouble for the syndicate. The incident where he allegedly was involved in the accidental shooting of a five-year-old boy (which led to his nickname in the press) is incorrectly associated with him shooting his way out of an attempt on his life (two boys hanging around the docks are killed), when in fact it happened as a result of a kidnapping he was accused of being part of.  Dutch Schultz is depicted by Vincent Gardenia, who was 15 years older than Chandler—Coll was only seven years younger than Schultz.

Cast 
 John Davis Chandler as Mad Dog Coll
 Kay Doubleday as Clio
 Brooke Hayward as Elizabeth
 Neil Nephew as Rocco
 Jerry Orbach as Joe Clegg
 Vincent Gardenia as Dutch Schultz
 Telly Savalas as Lt. Darro
 Glenn Cannon as Harry

Production
Brook Hayward was cast in October 1960.

The film was distributed by Columbia.

Novelization
In June, 1961, Monarch Books released a paperback novelization of the screenplay, by Frank Castle, writing under the pseudonym Steve Thurman. The cover featured a black-and-white still of the movie and an associate standing over the bedroom "rub-out" of a bullet-ridden married couple.

Reception
The New York Times wrote that the film "belongs back in the pound."

See also 
 Mad Dog Coll, 1992 movie

References

External links 

Category:1960s biographical films
Category:American films
Category:1961 films
Category:English-language films
Category:American crime films
Category:American biographical films
Category:Biographical films about mobsters
Category:Biographical films about Depression-era gangsters
Category:1960s crime films
Category:Columbia Pictures films
Category:Films directed by Burt Balaban
Category:Films set in the 1920s
Category:Films set in the 1930s
Category:Cultural depictions of Mad Dog Coll
Category:Cultural depictions of Dutch Schultz