Best movies like Call a Messenger

THE DEAD END KIDS versus THE LITTLE TOUGH GUYS Clashing head on...for control of the gutter!

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Call a Messenger Starring Billy Halop, Huntz Hall, Robert Armstrong, Mary Carlisle, and more. If you liked Call a Messenger then you may also like: You're Not So Tough, The Nevada Buckaroo, Once a Thief, Junior G-Men of the Air, Keep 'Em Slugging and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

A tough street kid attempts to rob a post office and is caught. In order to avoid reform school, he takes a job as a messenger with the post office. He finds that he likes it, and when his brother is released from prison, attempts to help his brother go straight. However, the two of them get mixed up with a local gangster, who has plans to start robbing post office branches and using the messenger and his brother to do it.

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You're Not So Tough

The Dead End Kids are out of the slums of New York's East Side and running around the sunny valleys of California looking for a way to make a quick buck. The idea of working never enters their minds until Halop is egged on by Grey to show his capabilities. Before long, he and Hall are working on the ranch of Galli, an elderly Italian woman who treats her workers like human beings instead of animals. Galli's son disappeared as an infant, and Halop tries to convince her that he is that long lost son, thus possibly sharing in her wealth. Galli is such a good person that Halop is soon motivated by respect instead of greed, so he devises a plan to help her when truckers and a labor organization band together to keep her crops from making it to market.

The Nevada Buckaroo

When the Nevada Kid gets caught in a stage robbery, the gang leader Cherokee gets him released by forging a petition to the Governor. The Kid tries to go straight but the stage he is guarding gets robbed. When the Sheriff jails Cherokee who was not in on the robbery, the Kid gets caught effecting Cherokee's escape and finds himself in jail again.

Once a Thief

Ex-convict Eddie and his wife, Kristine, attempt to build a new life for themselves and their daughter Kathy in San Francisco, but police officer Mike Vido is determined to send Eddie back to prison.

Keep 'Em Slugging

A gang of tough street kids decide to go straight and get jobs in order to free draft-age men for the war effort. However, because of their past tangles with the law, they can't find anybody who'll hire them. Finally one of them gets a job at the department store where his sister works, but runs afoul of a store executive who is in league with a ring of hijackers.

Angels with Dirty Faces

Childhood chums Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connelly grow up on opposite sides of the fence: Rocky matures into a prominent gangster, while Jerry becomes a priest, tending to the needs of his old tenement neighborhood.

Angels Wash Their Faces

A young man just released from a reformatory moves to a new neighborhood with his sister, intending to start a new life. However, he gets mixed up with the local mob boss and corrupt politicians and soon finds himself being framed for an arson and murder he didn't commit.

Bowery Blitzkrieg

The East Side Kids discover that one of their own, Danny, is torn between staying and school and becoming a boxer, and is getting mixed up with gangsters.

Sea Raiders

A bunch of waterfront youths pursue the Sea Raiders, a gang of saboteurs.

The Day They Robbed the Bank of England

London at the turn of the century. Three men is on a mission from the IRA to steal all the gold in the vaults of the Bank of England. Norgate, their leader, discovers the bank's weak spot: an old forgotten sewer straight under the vaults.

Crime School

In the slums, teenager Frankie Warren hangs out with a rowdy gang who one day knock him out in a fight. In court, the boys refuse to reveal who struck the knockout blow, and all are subsequently sentenced to a reformatory, cruelly run by two corrupt guards. New deputy commissioner Mark Braden arrives determined to change things, but despite the help of Frankie's sister, Mark's reform plans -- and Frankie's future -- may be sabotaged from within.

Avengement

While on a prison furlough, a lowly criminal evades his guards and returns to his old stomping ground to take revenge on the people who turned him into a cold blooded killer.

Blueprint for Robbery

A gang of career criminals plots the robbery of an armored car company's headquarters. Although the robbery itself goes off as planned, it's not long before the gang members are fighting among themselves over everybody's share of the loot and trying to avoid capture by the police, who are pouring all their resources into capturing the robbers. Based on a real-life 1950 Brinks Armored Car Co. robbery in Boston.

Murder in the First

Inspired by a true story. A petty criminal sent to Alcatraz in the 1930s is caught attempting to make an escape. As punishment he is put in solitary confinement. The maximum stay is supposed to be 19 days, but Henri spends years alone, cold and in complete darkness, only to emerge a madman and soon to be a murderer. The story follows a rookie lawyer attempting to prove that Alcatraz was to blame.

Tough Guys

Harry Doyle and Archie Lang are two old-time train robbers, who held up a train in 1956 and have been incarcerated for thirty years. After serving their time, they are released from jail and have to adjust to a new life of freedom. and soon realize that they still have the pizzazz when, picking up their prison checks at a bank, they foil a robbery attempt.

The Cimarron Kid

Audie Murphy comes into his own as a Western star in this story. Wrongly accused by crooked railroad officials of aiding a train heist by his old friends the Daltons, he joins their gang and becomes an active participant in other robberies. Betrayed by a fellow gang member, Murphy becomes a fugitive in the end. Seeking refuge at the ranch of a reformed gang member, he hopes to flee with the man's daughter to South America, but he's captured in the end and led off to jail. The girl promises to wait.

Top o' the Morning

A singing insurance investigator comes to Ireland to recover the stolen Blarney Stone...and romance the local policeman's daughter.

Strange Bargain

Bookkeeper Sam Wilson learns from his boss, Malcolm Jarvis, that he is losing his job because the company is closing down. Jarvis then makes a strange proposition, saying he intends to commit suicide but wants Sam to make it look like a murder, in order for his wife and son to inherit Jarvis's life insurance. Sam declines, but when he goes to see Jarvis and finds his dead body, he reluctantly goes along with the scheme.

Bowery Boy

Dr. Tom O'Hara takes over a public clinic in New York's desperately poor Bowery section. Boy gangleader Sock Dolan resents Tom's interference in moving Sock's kid brother to a hospital, because Sock blames hospitals for his mother's death. Sock helps racketeer J.R. Mason sell food to the clinic, unaware that Mason sells cheap and often tainted food. When a number of patients, including Sock's brother, become ill from food poisoning, Sock is kidnapped by Mason to keep him silent. Dr. O'Hara must find a way to rescue Sock and stop Mason's contamination of hospital food supplies.

Mug Town

Steve Bell, Tommy, Pig, Ape, and String are run of town. Steve, while hopping a freight card and trying to avoid the brakeman, is killed. The boys meet Steve's mother, Alice Bell and Tommy is given a job in the storage garage which she owns jointly with Mack Steward. Steve's brother Don Bell is working with some gangsters by tipping them off on valuable merchandise that can be hijacked. Pig, Ape and String overhear Don's plans to use Tommy as the fall guy in the next hijacking.

Hell's Kitchen

A paroled convict's efforts to improve conditions at a boys' reform school alarm the school's corrupt warden, who has been embezzling funds from the institution. He hatches a plan to derail the reformed convict's efforts and have him sent back to prison, and part of that scheme involves cracking down hard on the reform school's inmates.

Big Brother

When gangster Jimmy Donovan is made guardian of Midge, the 7-year-old brother of his friend Big Ben Murray, he decides to reform and rear Midge properly. The court takes custody of Midge, but Donovan proves himself by recovering a payroll stolen by some of his ex-colleagues, thereby winning Midge and Kitty, his girl.

Give Us Wings

Dead End Kids epic. The boys want desperately to fly, and get mixed up with crooked crop dusters, whose planes are flying deathtraps.

The Sky Raiders

Bob Rogers ('Lloyd Hughes'), a former World War One flying ace, loses his license after crashing an airplane while drunk. He works his way back into the commercial airline service by tracking down the bandits who have been robbing the Air Express.

Girls in Chains

A fired teacher finds work at a girls reform school and helps a detective on a case.

Little Tough Guy

The son of a man sentenced to death for a murder he didn't commit vows to become a criminal himself. He starts his own street gang, and their crime spree is financed by a mysterious young man--who turns out to be the son of the District Attorney who sent the boy's father to the electric chair.

Bullet Boy

Ricky is just out of a young offenders institute, heading home to Hackney and determined to go straight. Instead, he heads straight for trouble when he becomes involved in a street confrontation, siding with his best friend Wisdom against a local rude boy. The trouble escalates into a series of tit-for-tat incidents that threaten to spiral out of control. Ricky's 12-year-old brother Curtis, hero-worships Ricky, though he appears smart enough to know he doesn't want to follow his example. Yet, despite the stern warnings from his mother and support from her friends in the community, might Ricky's bad boy allure be too attractive for Curtis to resist?

Marmalade

Baron, an imprisoned man, strikes up a friendship with cellmate Otis. As the pair hatch an escape plan together, Baron recalls the story of how he met Marmalade, the love of his life, and their Bonnie and Clyde scheme to rob a bank in order to care for his sick mother and give the couple the life they’ve always dreamed of.

The Mayor of 44th Street

In this drama, an ex-vaudevillian dancer opens up a dance band agency and help street kids at the same time by hiring them to help out. Unfortunately, the local gang of hood's leader resists his attempts. More trouble ensues when the dancer helps a convict gain parole by hiring him. It later turns out that the ex-con is only interested in trying to use the agency as a front for extortion. Songs include the Oscar nominated "When There's a Breeze on Lake Louise," "Your Face Looks Familiar," "Heavenly, Isn't He?" "Let's Forget It," "You're Bad For Me," and "A Million Miles From Manhattan."

Gun Law Justice

Jimmy Wakely befriends Hank Carrdigan, a former outlaw who has served his sentence and wants to go straight. Jimmy, after clearing Hank of a wrongful shooting charge, helps him get a job as an express messenger. Hank drives off some bandits in an attempted hold-up, but recognizes his son Tom as one of the bandits. A later robbery is blamed on Hank but Jimmy and his sidekick Cannonball Taylor bring in the real culprits and clear Hank's name.

Boss of Boomtown

Soldiers Steve and Jim are friends but when their enlistment ends, Jim reenlists while Steve doesn't. Instead he takes an assignment to find the local gold rustlers. Robbing the stage and then the bank gets Steve into the gang where he plans a job that will capture the entire gang. But just as he is about to put his plan into action Jim arrives to arrest him.

A Marked Man

Bandit Cheyenne Harry reforms because of the faith placed in him by Molly Young and her father. Soon, however, Harry is lured from the straight and narrow when he meets his old friend Ben Kent and consents to participate in Kent's plan of robbing a stagecoach.

13 East Street

When police inspector Gerald Blake wants to infiltrate a London stolen-goods gang, he does a thorough job of it. First, he robs a jewelry store, gets caught and is sentenced to prison. Then he teams up with gang-member Joey to make their escape. Once in the gang, Blake identifies the boss, Larry, and most of the other thieves, but not the "inside man." As a big fur job looms closer, the detective's task is complicated by the playful but seductive advances of Judy, a dazzling blonde who happens also to be the jealous Larry's girl friend.

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