# The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967 film)
*The St. Valentine's Day Massacre* is a 1967 American crime drama directed and produced by [Roger Corman](https://www.edgepedia.org/roger-corman) for 20th Century-Fox, dramatizing the 1929 gangland killing in Chicago in which men disguised as police officers murdered seven members of [Bugs Moran](https://www.edgepedia.org/bugs-moran)'s North Side Gang on orders tied to [Al Capone](https://www.edgepedia.org/al-capone)'s organization.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetails/20427) • [2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1019761-1019761-st_valentines_day_massacre) It stars Jason Robards Jr. as Capone, George Segal as Peter Gusenberg, and Ralph Meeker as Moran, and it was Corman's only film for a major Hollywood studio.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetails/20427) • [3](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2007/aug/26/thriller.romance)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Release | 100 minutes; world premiere 30 June 1967 at the B&K Roosevelt Theatre in Chicago[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetails/20427) |
| Director / producer | Roger Corman; written by Howard Browne[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetails/20427) |
| Studio and budget | 20th Century-Fox; $2.5 million budget and a ten-week shooting schedule, markedly higher than Corman's other films at the time[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetails/20427) |
| Lead cast | Jason Robards Jr. (Al Capone), George Segal (Peter Gusenberg), Ralph Meeker (Bugs Moran)[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetails/20427) |
| Style | Docu-drama with dry, ironic narration introducing characters by name, age, alias, and position in the mob[4](https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Acontext_id=&BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Apermalink=st-valentines-day-massacre) • [5](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-st-valentine-s-day-massacre-1967) |
| Reception | 75% Tomatometer from 8 critics and 67% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1019761-1019761-st_valentines_day_massacre) |
| Legacy | Large segments were recycled in Corman's 1975 film *Capone*; a 4K restoration from the original negative has been screened by the BFI[6](https://stvalentinemassacre.org/the-legacy/) • [4](https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Acontext_id=&BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Apermalink=st-valentines-day-massacre) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
Chicago in the late 1920s. Al Capone ([Jason Robards](https://www.edgepedia.org/jason-robards)) runs the South Side from his hotel suites, surrounded by lieutenants who report profits like division managers. Bugs Moran ([Ralph Meeker](https://www.edgepedia.org/ralph-meeker)) holds the North Side. Between them: hijacked beer trucks, crooked cops, aldermen on the take, and a rising body count. An uncredited [Paul Frees](https://www.edgepedia.org/paul-frees), sounding like a newsreel, introduces the players with dates and addresses as though reading from a police blotter.[11](http://cineoutsider.com/reviews/bluray/s/st_valentines_day_massacre_br.html)
The film spends its middle hour with the men who actually do the shooting, chiefly the North Side enforcers Pete and Frank Gusenberg ([George Segal](https://www.edgepedia.org/george-segal) and [Frank Gorshin](https://www.edgepedia.org/frank-gorshin)), hard-luck soldiers who shake down speakeasies, hijack rival shipments, drink too much, and duck the retaliations their freelancing invites. Capone and Moran trade killings. Moran's gang rakes a restaurant where Capone is eating with Tommy Gun fire from a succession of passing cars, a bravura sequence of shattering glass and diving waiters.[11](http://cineoutsider.com/reviews/bluray/s/st_valentines_day_massacre_br.html) Capone, unhurt but furious, convenes his operatives in a boardroom-style meeting where they deliver profit reports and weigh whether killing Moran pays. When one suggests it is not a good business move, Capone snaps: "Business! I'm talking about staying alive!"[12](https://www.adrianmartinfilmcritic.com/reviews/s/st_vals_massacre.html) The decision is made.
Capone establishes his alibi in Florida while the hit is arranged at home. The plan uses a stolen liquor shipment as bait: Moran's men are told a hijacked load of Canadian whiskey is available cheap, and the exchange is set for the SMC Cartage garage on Clark Street.[13](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/20427)
**On the morning of February 14, 1929, seven men are lined up against a garage wall and shot down by men dressed as policemen.** Two of Capone's men arrive in a police car, walk into the garage as plainclothes officers conducting a raid, bluff the Moran crew into handing over their guns and facing the wall, then signal in two shooters disguised as cops. What makes the scene work is its procedural coldness: the victims cooperate in their own deaths because they believe it is a routine police shakedown, and the shooting is staged without music or bravado, a bookkeeping operation carried out at scale. In the aftermath, Frank Gusenberg is still breathing; taken to a hospital, he refuses to name his killers, following the code that keeps 618 Chicago murders unsolved.
The trap misses its target. Moran himself, arriving late, spots the police car outside the garage and walks away, assuming it is a raid. The dead are errand-level men and an optician with no gang ties at all. Capone learns from his Florida hotel that Moran was not among them. No one is ever brought to trial, but the massacre turns public sentiment decisively against the gangsters, and the narrator closes over shots of Capone's gravestone: the killers all die violent deaths within 22 months.[14](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20427-THE-ST.-VALENTINE'S-DAY-MASSACRE)
### Characters
**Al Capone (Jason Robards)** is the film's center of gravity: bull-voiced, paranoid, vain about his tailored suits and his standing as a businessman, and willing to kill whenever his survival is at stake.
**Pete Gusenberg (George Segal)** is a bottom-rung North Side enforcer, played with shabby, hungover specificity; he and his brother Frank do the daily work of the beer wars that the big men profit from.
**Bugs Moran (Ralph Meeker)** is Capone's North Side rival, nursing grudges older than the money, whose luck holds on the one morning it matters least.
**Joe Aiello (Bruce Dern)** is a jittery Sicilian gangster caught between the two empires; the film invents the manner and timing of his death, its only major departure from the record.[11](http://cineoutsider.com/reviews/bluray/s/st_valentines_day_massacre_br.html)
### Interpretations and controversies
The film's invented death for Joe Aiello drew notice from historians of the case, since everything else, down to the positions of the bodies, follows the record closely.[11](http://cineoutsider.com/reviews/bluray/s/st_valentines_day_massacre_br.html) Critics have also argued over the semidocumentary style itself. Roger Ebert, reviewing in Chicago, found the approach so dry that the film "very nearly attains the dramatic excitement of an Army training film."[5](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-st-valentine-s-day-massacre-1967) Adrian Martin later read it instead as a deliberate, mythified comic-book rendering of the gang war, every move and character rendered with exaggerated iconicity.[12](https://www.adrianmartinfilmcritic.com/reviews/s/st_vals_massacre.html)
## Production
Corman began work on the film for Twentieth Century-Fox immediately after ending his contract with [Columbia Pictures](https://www.edgepedia.org/columbia-pictures) over "artistic differences" on *A Time for Killing*, according to a 29 June 1966 *Daily Variety* report; scripting had begun in late 1965.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetails/20427) The $2.5 million budget and ten-week schedule reported by *Variety* in August 1966 were markedly higher than those of Corman's other films at the time.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetails/20427) [Principal photography](https://www.edgepedia.org/principal-photography) began on 24 October 1966, and filming took place on Stage 8 of the Fox studio lot in Los Angeles because Chicago proved unsuitable for the period setting due to modern street fixtures.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetails/20427)
**Casting.** Corman reportedly expressed interest in Marlon Brando for Capone, and he wanted [Orson Welles](https://www.edgepedia.org/orson-welles), but Fox rejected Welles as too unpredictable and unwilling to take direction; the part went to Jason Robards Jr., who did not resemble Capone and, to appear frightening, had to shout his dialogue.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetails/20427) • [7](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1551105/the-st-valentines-day-massacre) The documentary approach required a large cast of familiar crime-movie actors, including Richard Bakalyan, Harold J. Stone, [Joe Turkel](https://www.edgepedia.org/joe-turkel), Frank Silvera, Kurt Kreuger, and [Alex Rocco](https://www.edgepedia.org/alex-rocco), alongside Corman regulars such as Bruce Dern, Dick Miller, and Barboura Morris.[7](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1551105/the-st-valentines-day-massacre) Jack Nicholson, then ready to quit acting for writing, declined a larger role Corman offered and instead chose a minor character with the most working days to maximize his pay.[7](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1551105/the-st-valentines-day-massacre)
Machine-gun effects were achieved with circuit-laced striker boards; *Daily Variety* estimated dummy ammunition costs above $9,000 for 10,000 bullets at fifty cents apiece and 20,000 explosive squibs at twenty cents apiece to simulate wounds.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetails/20427)
## Screenplay and style
Screenwriter Howard Browne had written a segment of the anthology television series *Playhouse 90* about the massacre, and Corman hired him to write the film in a similar docu-drama style.[4](https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Acontext_id=&BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Apermalink=st-valentines-day-massacre) The film uses dry, ironic narration to lay out the historical clash between the gangs of Capone and Moran, with flashbacks to the 1924 killing of Dion O'Bannion and the 1926 murder of [Hymie Weiss](https://www.edgepedia.org/hymie-weiss).[7](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1551105/the-st-valentines-day-massacre) Unlike most tellings of the story, it uses the characters' real names rather than pseudonyms.[8](https://60minuteswith.co.uk/film-and-tv/review-the-st-valentines-day-massacre/)
Corman also re-staged events from classic gangster films in their original contexts to contrast history with Hollywood myth: Peter Gusenberg harasses a speakeasy owner as [James Cagney](https://www.edgepedia.org/james-cagney) had in *The Public Enemy* (1931), and an authentic assassination attempt on Capone is shown as a parade of 22 cars firing machine guns past an Italian restaurant, as depicted in *Scarface* (1932).[7](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1551105/the-st-valentines-day-massacre) The BFI describes the result as short on sensationalism and devoid of the romanticism usually associated with the genre.[4](https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Acontext_id=&BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Apermalink=st-valentines-day-massacre) The famed mass murder itself is filmed with discretion; the most expressive image is a close-up of smoke curling from a shotgun barrel.[7](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1551105/the-st-valentines-day-massacre)
## Reception
Roger Ebert, then the newly appointed film critic of the *Chicago Sun-Times*, reviewed the film negatively in July 1967, writing that it "approaches documentary truth so closely that it very nearly attains the dramatic excitement of an Army training film" and criticizing the narration, the soapflake snow on the backlot sets, and Robards's performance as one-dimensional.[5](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-st-valentine-s-day-massacre-1967) Later assessments have been more favorable: *Time Out* called it one of Corman's best films, noting its hard, almost documentary treatment of the gang warfare and its stress on the Sicilian nature of the Mafia and its relations with non-Sicilians like Capone.[9](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-st-valentines-day-massacre) On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 75% Tomatometer from 8 critics and a 67% Popcornmeter from more than 1,000 audience ratings.[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1019761-1019761-st_valentines_day_massacre)
Released months before MGM's *The Dirty Dozen* and Warner Bros.' *Bonnie & Clyde*, the film led the pack in what became a breakout year for violent movie fare.[7](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1551105/the-st-valentines-day-massacre) The *Guardian* places it alongside *Bonnie and Clyde* as the culmination of the gangster cycle, the former sombre and factual, the latter lyrical and legendary.[3](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2007/aug/26/thriller.romance)
## Corman's studio experience
The film was one of the few Corman pictures made with the backing of a major studio and a generous budget, an experience that left him disgusted with the waste of time and money in typical studio production.[10](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-st-valentines-day-massacre-film-review-by-adam-micklethwaite) He did not continue as a director-for-hire: he disliked the studio's arbitrary oversight and having his casting decisions second-guessed, and he had no power to question Fox's reports that the relatively inexpensive, widely screened film did not turn a profit.[7](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1551105/the-st-valentines-day-massacre) He returned to independent directing and soon left the director's chair to run his distribution company, New World.[7](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1551105/the-st-valentines-day-massacre) In his 1975 film *Capone* for Fox, Corman recycled large segments of the 1967 film, including footage of places being machine-gunned.[6](https://stvalentinemassacre.org/the-legacy/)
## References
1. [The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), AFI Catalog](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetails/20427)
2. [The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1019761-1019761-st_valentines_day_massacre)
3. [How violent taboos were blown away, The Guardian (2007)](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2007/aug/26/thriller.romance)
4. [The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, BFI Southbank](https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Acontext_id=&BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Apermalink=st-valentines-day-massacre)
5. [The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), review by Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-st-valentine-s-day-massacre-1967)
6. [The Legacy, St. Valentine's Day Massacre site](https://stvalentinemassacre.org/the-legacy/)
7. [The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, by Glenn Erickson, Turner Classic Movies](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1551105/the-st-valentines-day-massacre)
8. [Review: The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, 60 Minutes With (2018)](https://60minuteswith.co.uk/film-and-tv/review-the-st-valentines-day-massacre/)
9. [The St Valentine's Day Massacre, Time Out](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-st-valentines-day-massacre)
10. [The St Valentine's Day Massacre, Eye for Film review by Adam Micklethwaite](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-st-valentines-day-massacre-film-review-by-adam-micklethwaite)
11. [http://cineoutsider.com/reviews/bluray/s/st_valentines_day_massacre_br.html](http://cineoutsider.com/reviews/bluray/s/st_valentines_day_massacre_br.html)
12. [https://www.adrianmartinfilmcritic.com/reviews/s/st_vals_massacre.html](https://www.adrianmartinfilmcritic.com/reviews/s/st_vals_massacre.html)
13. [https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/20427](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/20427)
14. [https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20427-THE-ST.-VALENTINE'S-DAY-MASSACRE](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20427-THE-ST.-VALENTINE'S-DAY-MASSACRE)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 1960s films*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license