A well above average entry in The Untouchables series that focuses on the smuggling of brewmeisters from Germany into the U.S. in a lake shore community in northern Michigan called Chippewa Falls. It gets off to a good noirish start in the fog and stays in that mode for the remainder of the episode.
The story revolves around an attractive young widow, slightly ditsy but basically just lonely and too good for the class of people she hangs with, and a very dangerous and ambitious brewmeister excellently portrayed by Claude Akins,--startling to behold in his first scene--whose German accent wobbles but whose performance is baleful, so much so as to make just about every scene Akins is in feel like something out of a a horror movie.
Dolores Dorn is excellent as the widow with an overactive imagination and a crush on Eliot Ness. Her fate,--as in "will she, won't she, survive?"--drives the second half of the episode, as the noose tightens, and Akins, already in take charge mode with mobster Frank Nitti, is getting mighty suspicious of this seemingly out of place in the world of gangsters dame who might just be betraying the people she's supposed to be in league with.
The Monkey Wrench is good enough to have been a stand alone episode in an anthology series set during Prohibition; or, better yet, a first rate low budget movie, with the story more fleshed out (but not padded), with more character development for Dorn and, especially, Akins' brutal hood who, even early on, the viewer is reminded, has a bad reputation as unpredictable, a bit unhinged, and very dangerous. Danger drives this story, and it's very well done.
The story revolves around an attractive young widow, slightly ditsy but basically just lonely and too good for the class of people she hangs with, and a very dangerous and ambitious brewmeister excellently portrayed by Claude Akins,--startling to behold in his first scene--whose German accent wobbles but whose performance is baleful, so much so as to make just about every scene Akins is in feel like something out of a a horror movie.
Dolores Dorn is excellent as the widow with an overactive imagination and a crush on Eliot Ness. Her fate,--as in "will she, won't she, survive?"--drives the second half of the episode, as the noose tightens, and Akins, already in take charge mode with mobster Frank Nitti, is getting mighty suspicious of this seemingly out of place in the world of gangsters dame who might just be betraying the people she's supposed to be in league with.
The Monkey Wrench is good enough to have been a stand alone episode in an anthology series set during Prohibition; or, better yet, a first rate low budget movie, with the story more fleshed out (but not padded), with more character development for Dorn and, especially, Akins' brutal hood who, even early on, the viewer is reminded, has a bad reputation as unpredictable, a bit unhinged, and very dangerous. Danger drives this story, and it's very well done.