The 1958 film The Boss looks like a movie that would be right at home on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The movie tries to be a gritty gangster film, but instead, the audience is treated to endless exposition, shoot-outs with no blood, and characters who make decisions that make no sense whatsoever. At the beginning of the film, there is a title card stating that it is up to local communities to be vigilant and stop these bosses, but by the end of the film, I was more concerned about protecting innocent audiences from The Boss.
The Boss opens with a military parade. World War I has just ended, and a small town is welcoming home its soldiers. Matt Brady (John Payne) is the town's big war hero as well as the mayor's brother, and he has a schoolteacher girlfriend Elsie (Doe Avedon) waiting for him. In his first night home, he gets drunk, gets in a bar fight, and then shows up an hour and a half late for his date. When she refuses to let him in, he goes off to another bar and marries the first woman he meets, a woman named Lorry (Gloria McGehee) with extremely low self-esteem. Soon after, he hires his friend Bob (William Bishop) to be his lawyer, and their relationship is complicated by the fact that Bob married Matt's ex-girlfriend Elsie. With Bob's help, Matt starts buying up the whole town including the local concrete business, and he becomes the town “boss.”
I mentioned that the decisions in this movie make no sense. The most baffling decision for me comes at the very beginning of the movie when Matt drunkenly decides to get married after just meeting Lorry, and Lorry goes along with it because she says she is plain and no one will want her anyways. I refuse to believe that anyone has such low self-esteem that they would marry a total stranger (who is also completely wasted) and then put up with this level of verbal abuse. In almost every scene where they are together, Matt tells Lorry that she is ugly, he doesn't love her, or he will kill her if she ever considers divorcing him. When Matt invites Bob and Elsie over for dinner, he buys Lorry $10,000 diamond jewelry and tells her to put on some make-up and “do the best she can” to look attractive. This verbal abuse is all the more baffling because the actress who plays Lorry is far from ugly.
What makes The Boss perfect for Mystery Science Theater 3000, however, is the soundtrack and dialogue. At every little slightly dramatic moment, the soundtrack swells with a score that might make sense in Gone with the Wind, but in this movie, it is out of place and ridiculous. Similarly, the dialogue is so melodramatic that the jokes practically write themselves, not to mention that it is prime for great “Who's the Boss?” puns. At the end of the film as Lorry is leaving Matt, the writers gave Lorry this prime monologue. “Bob was never your friend...Elsie was never your love...I was never your wife...this house was never your home.” I'm half-tempted to edit a video mash-up of Lorry's monologue with Steve Martin's “All I need is this chair” speech from The Jerk. (As I said, the jokes practically write themselves.) Unless Mystery Science Theater 3000 reunites or Cinematic Titanic decides to screen it on tour, I don't recommend ever wasting your time on The Boss.
DVD Bonus Features
There are no special features on the DVD. It is a play-only disc.
"The Boss" is on sale July 5, 2011 and is not rated. Crime, Drama. Directed by Byron Haskin. Written by Dalton Trumbo, Ben Perry. Starring Doe Avedon, Gloria Mcgehee, John Payne, William Bishop.
