Eagle Lion struggled with it’s lack of name stars and material but it struck gold with T-Men, a medium budget combination of documentary realism and film noir expressionism, so they commissioned a series of follow up films. Like T Men, this was shot by John Alton and directed by Anthony Mann (mostly, that is – Mann is actually uncredited.)
This one falls into the sub-genre known as “police procedural”, with a great emphasis on realism. The intro claims it’s a true story, with names changed to protect the innocent (adding to the Dragnet connection, Jack Webb’s in the support cast). There is a narrator who talks about the reality of it all, the police are professionals with little private life, there’s a lot of emphasis on “hey look at this neat technological development in catching crooks” (here it’s creating an identikit of the killer – in White Heat I remember it was tracking a car).
Richard Baseheart is good as the brilliant crook, based on a real person – he used to work for the police so knows their procedure; listens to police on the radio; can fix himself up after being shot; is a skilled electronics expert. These sort of showy parts normally launch stars – remember Dick Widmark in Kiss of Death? Basehart never became one – maybe because of subsequent poor choice of material, maybe because he doesn’t have much dialogue and doesn’t really get to interact with anyone. Bland Scott Brady is technically the hero.
Lovely photography and many memorable shots of late night LA – deserted lonely streets, back alleys, the final shoot out in the sewers (reminiscent of The Third Man).
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