Chicago Joe and the Showgirl

1990 film by Bernard Rose

Kiefer Sutherland
Emily Lloyd
Patsy Kensit

CinematographyMike SouthonEdited byCarlos PuenteMusic byShirley Walker
Hans Zimmer

Production
companies

PolyGram
Working Title Films

Distributed byPalace Pictures^[1]

Release date

27 July 1990 (1990-07-27)

Running time

103 minutesCountryUnited KingdomLanguageEnglishBudget$5 million^[2]Box office$85,395 (US)^[3]
£58,037 (UK)^[4]

Chicago Joe and the Showgirl is a 1990 British crime drama film directed by Bernard Rose and written by David Yallop, starring Kiefer Sutherland and Emily Lloyd. The film was inspired by the real-life Hulten/Jones murder case of 1944, otherwise known as the Cleft Chin Murder.

Plot

In the film, Karl Hulten (Kiefer Sutherland) is an American GI who is stalking the black market of London after stealing an army truck and going AWOL. There he meets up with Betty Jones (Emily Lloyd), a stripper with a deluded fantasy world view formed by watching a steady stream of Hollywood film noir and gangster pictures. Seeing Karl, who claims he is Chicago Joe doing advance work in London for encroaching Chicago gangsters, Betty takes the opportunity to set her fantasies to life as she connives Karl into a spree of petty crimes. With luck on their side, the spree keeps escalating, until Betty urges Karl to commit the ultimate crime: murder.

Cast

Kiefer Sutherland as Karl Hulten
Emily Lloyd as Betty Jones
Liz Fraser as Mrs. Evans
John Lahr as Radio commentator
Harry Fowler as Morry
Keith Allen as Lenny Bexley
Patsy Kensit as Joyce Cook
Angela Morant as Customer

References

^ "Chicago Joe and the Showgirl (1990)". BBFC. Retrieved 2 May 2021.
^ "15 years of production". Variety. 14 December 1998. p. 102.
^ "Chicago Joe and the Showgirl (1990)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 7 August 2011.
^ "Back to the Future: The Fall and Rise of the British Film Industry in the 1980s - An Information Briefing" (PDF). British Film Institute. 2005. p. 20.