Down Three Dark Streets (1954)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Absolutely Fantastic

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

When FBI Agent Zack Stewart is killed, Agent John Ripley takes over the three cases he was working on, hoping one will lead to his killer. The first involves gangster Joe Walpo and Ripley finds his hideout through Joe's girl friend, Connie Anderson. Joe is killed but it is established he was 400 miles away when Stewart was murdered. The next involves a car-theft gang which Ripley breaks up by using one of the gang, Vince Angelino and his wife Julie. The last case involves Kate Martell, the victim of an extortionist who threatens to kidnap her child unless she pays him $10,000.This certainly is an interesting look at FBI cases and procedures, with them using bulky equipment to spy on neighbors, intercept phone calls and make identifications. But this was the 1950s, when such things were primitive and relatively innocent. (The FBI surveillance went too far in the 1960s and was shut down by the courts.) Very interesting film, well worth being better known. And the film quality seems to have held up very nicely over the years. The one on Netflix looks great.

***SPOILERS*** Pretty good FBI crime drama with Broaderick Crawford as FBI Agent John "Rip" Ripley on the trail of an on the loose killer who murdered his friend and fellow FBI Agent Zack Stewart, Kenneth Tobey.Finding out that the late Agent Stewart was involved in three separate cases it becomes evident that somehow one of the cases he was working on had to involved the man who murdered him. Agent Ripley soon comes to the conclusion that the case involving the extortion of widow Kate Martell, Ruth Roman, is the one that lead to Agent Stewart's murder and may possibly be connected in the two other cases he was involved in; A car robbery ring and the murder of a gas station attendant, William Schallert, on the Nevada Californian border!Using Mrs. Martell as bait Agent Ripley has her play along with her extortionist who want her to pay him off with the $10,000.00 of insurance money she got when her husband was killed in a fatal car accident. If Mrs. Martell doesn't comply he threatens to murder her nine year old daughter Vickie, Dede Grinor.It takes both good old fashion police work as well as the most up to date state of the art, circa 1954, police science to finally track down the both killer/extortionist. In the process of doing that Agent Riply also solves the two other cases,the car robbery ring and murder of the gas station attendant, as well. Even though they had nothing at all to do with both Agent Stewart and Brenda Rolles' (Suzanne Alexander), who knew who Stewarts killer was, murders.***SPOILER ALERT*** The films ending was a real hum dingier with the killer finally revealing himself as he appears out of the blue right under the famous Hollywood sign. It's there where he instructed Mrs. Martell to leave the extortion money. It was also there where Agent Ripley, without Mrs. Mantell knowledge, and his fellow FBI agents and the local police set a trap for him!P.S Interesting cast of unknowns who went on to bigger and better things later on in their film careers. Both Kenneth Tobey-who also stared in the sci-fi classic "The Thing" back in 1951-and Max Showalter were to make within two years, in 1955 & 1956, the classic bad sci-fi movie epics that were immortalized on TV-on shows like Mystery Science Fiction Theater 3000-in "It Came Form Beneath the Sea" and "The Indestructible Man". The murdered gas station attendant William Schallert was to later play the befuddled and out of touch, to what his zany daughter was doing, father of Patty Duke in the aptly named "Patty Duke Show". And the beefy and booming voiced Claud Akins was to finally make it all the way to top, as President of the United States, playing President Teddy Roosevelt in the 1992, two years before his untimely death of cancer, Sherlock Holmes movie "Incident at Victoria Falls".

Enjoyed viewing this black and white film from 1954 starring some great veteran female actors, namely: Martha Hyer, (Connie Anderson), who looked just like Marilyn Monroe and was being controlled by a mysterious man who keeps sending her all kinds of gifts, but she never goes out of her apartment. Connie is visited by FBI Agent John Ripley,(Broderick Crawford) and flirts with him like she has never seen a man before. Ruth Roman, (Kate Martell) is a fashion designer who is being threatened by a black mailer who wants ten-thousand dollars or he will kill her daughter. Julie Angelino, (Marisa Povan) is another woman whose husband was accused of a crime he did not commit and he refused to tell the police who really performed this crime and was sent to prison. Julie is also a target for this blackmailer and killer. Kenneth Tobey, (FBI Agent Zack Stewart was assigned to these three cases and was killed before he could solve this crime. Agent John Ripley was then assigned to these cases and has plenty of work ahead of him trying to gets leads from these three women. There are some great old time scenes of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Enjoyable old timer from 1954.

DOWN THREE DARK STREETS, with its trio of cases for the FBI to solve, was the template eight years later for EXPERIMENT IN TERROR, reduced down to just the extortion plot. Broderick Crawford is "Agent John Ripley" in the first, Glenn Ford is named the same character in the second. STREETS uses the semi-documentary approach (heavy-handed voice-over narration) and is more of a whodunit, while EXPERIMENT is a real suspense-filled thriller with the villain identified much earlier. But even then, it is much more chilling. Ruth Roman is the fear-filled victim in the original, Lee Remick plays the spunky lady being extorted in the semi-remake. Good Los Angeles locales, especially the "Hollywood" sign usage in the first. But great San Francisco scenes in TERROR, particularly the Candlestick Park shootout following a Giants-Dodgers game. Both are recommended, with STREETS a competent mystery and EXPERIMENT a classic at the end of the Noir cycle.