Watch The Phenix City Story (1955) Free Online

Release Date: 1955

Cast: Richard Kiley, John McIntire

Categories: Movies, Crime Fiction, Thriller, Social problem film, Crime Drama, Docudrama, Black-and-white, Film noir

The Phenix City Story (1955) is a film noir directed by Phil Karlson for Allied Artists and written by Daniel Mainwaring and Crane Wilbur. The drama features John McIntire and Richard Kiley, among others. The film depicts the real-life 1954 assassination of Albert Patterson, who had just been elected Alabama Attorney General on a platform of cleaning up Phenix City, Alabama, a city controlled by organized crime. Patterson was murdered in Phenix City, and the subsequent outcry resulted in the imposition of martial law on the city by the state government. Some prints of the film include a... MORE

The Phenix City Story (1955) is a film noir directed by Phil Karlson for Allied Artists and written by Daniel Mainwaring and Crane Wilbur. The drama features John McIntire and Richard Kiley, among others. The film depicts the real-life 1954 assassination of Albert Patterson, who had just been elected Alabama Attorney General on a platform of cleaning up Phenix City, Alabama, a city controlled by organized crime. Patterson was murdered in Phenix City, and the subsequent outcry resulted in the imposition of martial law on the city by the state government. Some prints of the film include a 13-minute newsreel-style preface including newsman Clete Roberts interviewing many of the actual participants. In reality the city was so corrupt and dangerous--so many soldiers from nearby Fort Benning, Georgia, were robbed, beaten and murdered there that at one time the post's commander, Gen. George S. Patton, threatened to take his tanks into the city and clean it out himself if the state didn't do something about it (Patton was shortly thereafter transferred and the city remained the haven for gambling, prostitution and drug dealing that it had been). When the film was released in 1955, Bosley LESS