Sam Fuller's ambitious "Underworld U.S.A." is a focused, driven little machine of a picture with Cliff Robertson as a man intent on avenging his father, who was murdered by 5 men who eventually became mafia kingpins. In order to do so, he must first spend time in the "big house" to get the info from the one perp he identified, and then insinuate himself into the organization to track down and destroy the others.
What's notable to me in the film is the way that the positive/moral characters in the film are only vaguely given much room to actually wield moral authority. For example, Sandy (Beatrice Kay), the kindly tavern owner who more or less adopts Tolly Devlin (Robertson) after his father's murder, is characterized by gigantic posters of babies on her walls and creepy looking dolls stuffed throughout her house. The police are portrayed in a positive way, but they're also showed as dupes (Devlin easily abuses the D.A.'s trust for his own revenge) and perhaps overly zealous. The film repeats propaganda tropes about young people ("age 10 to 15" as the villain specifies) becoming hooked on drugs by the mafia, much in the same way Fuller's "Pickup on South Street" scared us with the ever-present commie threat to our way of life. There's a sense that the depiction of that menace is being undermined by the film's single-minded focus on the hero's equally single- minded mission.
Robertson and the rest of the cast are solid, not necessarily remarkable... it's a weird film because in some ways it more closely resembles a film from the late 40s or early 50s, but in other ways it's ahead of its time. It's a bit closer to "Death Wish" or "Point Blank" in terms of how little credence or attention it gives to the idea of the hero actually "going straight" or doing anything other than follow a very linear path to a gruesome ending. As such, it fits into a pattern of other late 50s/early 60s films that reached back to 30s archetypes and tried to re-invent them in more brutally deterministic terms (Fuller's westerns from the period follow the trend as well).
There are many truly memorable scenes here -- this one deserves to be seen by a lot more people.
What's notable to me in the film is the way that the positive/moral characters in the film are only vaguely given much room to actually wield moral authority. For example, Sandy (Beatrice Kay), the kindly tavern owner who more or less adopts Tolly Devlin (Robertson) after his father's murder, is characterized by gigantic posters of babies on her walls and creepy looking dolls stuffed throughout her house. The police are portrayed in a positive way, but they're also showed as dupes (Devlin easily abuses the D.A.'s trust for his own revenge) and perhaps overly zealous. The film repeats propaganda tropes about young people ("age 10 to 15" as the villain specifies) becoming hooked on drugs by the mafia, much in the same way Fuller's "Pickup on South Street" scared us with the ever-present commie threat to our way of life. There's a sense that the depiction of that menace is being undermined by the film's single-minded focus on the hero's equally single- minded mission.
Robertson and the rest of the cast are solid, not necessarily remarkable... it's a weird film because in some ways it more closely resembles a film from the late 40s or early 50s, but in other ways it's ahead of its time. It's a bit closer to "Death Wish" or "Point Blank" in terms of how little credence or attention it gives to the idea of the hero actually "going straight" or doing anything other than follow a very linear path to a gruesome ending. As such, it fits into a pattern of other late 50s/early 60s films that reached back to 30s archetypes and tried to re-invent them in more brutally deterministic terms (Fuller's westerns from the period follow the trend as well).
There are many truly memorable scenes here -- this one deserves to be seen by a lot more people.