Best movies like Joe Palooka in Fighting Mad
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Joe Palooka in Fighting Mad Starring Joe Kirkwood, Jr., Leon Errol, Elyse Knox, John Hubbard, and more. If you liked Joe Palooka in Fighting Mad then you may also like: When We Were Kings, Whiplash, World in My Corner, Night Parade, Body and Soul 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.
Joe Palooka goes blind during a fight. An operation restores his vision, but he's told not to fight for a year. His trainer Knobby has picked up another fighter, but gangsters are pressing him to fix fights. Joe decides to risk his eyesight to save Knobby's honor.
Joe Palooka in Fighting Mad
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World in My Corner
A scrappy fighter from Jersey City named Tommy Shea -- "born in a dump, educated in an alley" -- catches the eye of wealthy businessman, Robert Mallinson, who allows him to train at his Long Island estate. Shea soon falls for Mallinson's daughter, Dorothy, but fears he doesn't have the money to support her in proper style. To get this money, Shea decides to work with crooked fight-promoter Harry Cram, even though this means dropping his honest manager, Dave Bernstein. As the big fight approaches, however, Shea begins to have second thoughts.
Night Parade
Bobby Martin, a young middleweight champion boxer, is an honest and decent fighter. However, a dishonest but beautiful woman uses every trick to ensnare him.
Body and Soul
Charley Davis, against the wishes of his mother, becomes a boxer. As he becomes more successful the fighter becomes surrounded by shady characters, including an unethical promoter named Roberts, who tempt the man with a number of vices. Charley finds himself faced with increasingly difficult choices.
The Champ
Billy used to be a great boxer, but he's settled into a hardscrabble life that revolves around drinking, training horses, and the one bright spot in his existence — his young son, T.J. Although Billy has had custody of T.J. since his wife, Annie, left the family years ago, her return prompts a new struggle for the former fighter. Determined to hold on to his son, Billy gets back into the ring to try and recapture his past success.
Love Leads the Way: A True Story
Based on the true story of Morris Frank and the first U.S. Seeing Eye Dog, Buddy.
Freight
A Russian gang operating in Leeds with no respect for the laws of England, traffic Eastern Europeans in containers then enslave them, the women to sex, the men to illegal fights. They cross local businessman Gabe Taylor and a war escalates, but when his daughter is taken to be sold into the sex trade, Gabe fights back.
Joe Palooka, Champ
After losing heavyweight contender Al Costa to mob boss Florini fight promoter Knobby Walsh recruits small town boy Joe Palooka to take his place. First in the series.
Joe Palooka in the Squared Circle
Joe Palooka encounters gangsters and tries to alert the law.
Joe Palooka in Winner Take All
Joe is scheduled for the big fight as usual. This one has more fight sequences than plot.
Gentleman Joe Palooka
In the second film of Monogram's Joe Palooka series, Joe is 'used', by two state senators scheming to obtain oil-rich lands, in a publicity campaign to get the land transferred to the state, supposedly for a park. When Joe learns that he has been used as a dupe he becomes disillusioned and leaves the prize=fighting profession. But, his manager, sparring partners, and fiancée manage to expose the land-grab scheme, clear Joe's name and discredit the crooked politicians.
Joe Palooka in the Knockout
The third of the Monogram series based on Ham Fisher's "Joe Palooka" comic strip, opens with Knobby Walsh, the manager of Joe Palooka trying to talk his way out of a traffic citation, and the story leading to that point is told in flashback as narrated by Walsh. Heavyweight champion Joe, after knocking out an opponent who later died in his dressing room, feels responsible and threatens to give up boxing. But the dead fighter's fiance thinks he died as the result of a drug that was given to him by a gang of gamblers, who made a rich haul betting on Palooka. Joe, Knobby and the police unite to run down the gamblers, but not before Joe also is nearly murdered by the same means...a poisoned mouthpiece. Elyse Knox is along as Joe's sweetheart Anne Howe, although Anne and Joe had long been married in the comic strip.
Joe Palooka in the Counterpunch
Joe heads for South America to fight the Latin champ. Shipboard, he helps federal agents fight counterfeiters. He also spars with love interest Anne Howe.
Joe Palooka Meets Humphrey
Newlyweds Joe and Anne Palooka are delayed in their honeymoon plans by the helpful Humphrey Pennyworth and by considerably-less-helpful manager, Knobby Walsh.
Joe Palooka in Triple Cross
Joe Palooka and two friends are taking hostage by three criminals.
Joe Palooka in Humphrey Takes a Chance
A crooked boxing promoter tries to shake down Joe's manager by setting up a rigged fight in Humphrey Pennyworth's hometown.
Joe Palooka in the Big Fight
Gangsters frame Joe on a drunk charge and a murder rap so they can put their own fighter into a big event. Joe investigates in an attempt to prove his innocence.
The Last Man on Earth
An epidemic has killed off all of the fertile men on earth, except for Elmer Smith, a hillbilly who lives out in a cabin in the Ozarks, when he is discovered, every woman on the planet begins fighting over him.
Undisputed
Monroe Hutchens is the heavyweight champion of Sweetwater, a maximum security prison. He was convicted to a life sentence due to a passionate crime. Iceman Chambers is the heavyweight champion, who lost his title due to a rape conviction to ten years in Sweetwater. WHen these two giants collide in the same prison, they fight against each other disputing who is the real champion.
City of Shadows
After several years of supporting parts, Victor McLaglen once more landed a leading role in Republic's City of Shadows. McLaglen plays Big Tim Channing, an ageing but powerful gangster who raises young newsboy Dan Mason as his own son. Upon reaching adulthood, Mason (John Baer) becomes a law student, with the covert (and illegal) help of Channing. Despite his checkered past, Mason opts for honesty when he falls in love with Fern Fellows (Kathleen Crowley). This decision ultimately spells the doom for Mason's mentor Big Tim.
Champ for a Day
An up-and-coming heavyweight fighter, George Wilson, arrives in Vulcan City, a small mid-western town over-run by racketeers, to fight a heavily-favored Frankie Sebastian. George arrives but his manager Dolan is nowhere to be found. But Ma and Pa Karlsen, owners of Karlsen's Kozy Kottages motel and restaurant take him under their wing. He meets Miss Gormley who is also there to meet the no-show manager who is blackmailing her brother. Dolan still hasn't arrived by the date of the fight but, to the surprise of sports-promoters Tom Healy and Dominic Guido, George shows up and wins the fight. This wins him the friendship of trainer Al Muntz and the enmity of Willie Foltis, a punchy ex-fighter and a Healy henchman. This leads George to a fight with "Soldier" Freeman, whose manager Scotty Cameron has made arrangements for the favored-Freeman to take a dive, so he and Healy and Guido can clean up betting on the underdog. But Honest George has other plans.
I'll Sell My Life
A woman hoping to raise cash to pay for an operation to restore her blind brother's eyesight finds herself implicated in a nightclub murder.
Secrets of a Nurse
This Universal programmer was based on a Collier's Magazine story by journalist Quentin Reynolds. This story in turn was ostensibly based on a true incident, in which a gangster "returned from the dead" to save an innocent young man from the electric chair. The nurse of the film's title is Katharine McDonald, who falls in love with her prizefighter-patient Lee Burke as he recovers from a beating received in a fixed prizefight. Katharine must fend off the advances of criminal attorney John Dodge, another patient who also loves her and becomes jealous of Lee. But when Lee is framed for the murder of his disgruntled manager, Slice, by a henchman of the fight-fix leader, Joe Largo, Dodge takes on his defense and works with Katherine to discover the real killer. Convicted and sentenced to death, Burke is about to walk the "last mile", as Katharine encourages mortally wounded Largo to a deathbed confession.
The Squealer
A gangster's wife, fearful that he is about to be murdered by his rivals, tips off the police to his whereabouts in order to save his life. Her husband, however, believes her reason was that she wanted him out of the way so she could have his best friend.
The Big Timer
Loud-mouth hamburger flipper, Cooky, thinks he can box. His big chance comes when everyone else quits the gym when it is inherited by a dame.
Miss Tatlock's Millions
After the accidental death of an idiot heir, a stunt man is hired to impersonate him while the family gathers to determine the dispersment of the estate of Miss Tatlock's millions.
Bomba and the Jungle Girl
Bomba decides to find out who his parents were. He starts with Cody Casson's diary and follows the trail to a native village. An ancient blind woman tells him his parents and the village's true ruler were murdered by the current chieftain and his daughter.
The Big Fight
Based on the David Belasco stage production of the Max Marcin play in which heavyweight-champion Jack Dempsey played the role of the fighter, Tiger: This "behind-the-scenes look of a heavyweight-championship fight" looks much like all of the other boxing films in which the Champ gets involved in a frame-up and is asked to take a dive.
Two-Fisted
A fast-talking boxing manager and the somewhat hapless fighter he manages happen to run into a young man who was a good prizefighter in his day but is now out of the sport and has a drinking problem. They decide to train him for a big match, and in the process find themselves involved in romance, shady characters and a possible kidnapping.
Flying Fists
A lumberjack knocks out a champion boxer in a brawl, gets drawn into the boxing world where he is unknowingly set up for a fixed fight.
The Prize Fighter
"Bags" the boxer (funnyman Tim Conway) and his manager, Shake (Don Knotts), are quite a pair: One is a dim bulb, and the other has a mean streak. Times are tough and they must save their gym, so they line up some moneymaking fights. But when Bags and Shake discover that the bouts have been rigged, they end up with their backs to the wall and must fight back -- literally.
When We Were Kings
It's 1974. Muhammad Ali is 32 and thought by many to be past his prime. George Foreman is ten years younger and the heavyweight champion of the world. Promoter Don King wants to make a name for himself and offers both fighters five million dollars apiece to fight one another, and when they accept, King has only to come up with the money. He finds a willing backer in Mobutu Sese Suko, the dictator of Zaire, and the "Rumble in the Jungle" is set, including a musical festival featuring some of America's top black performers, like James Brown and B.B. King.