Illegal Traffic

J. Carroll Naish is in the transportation business. His network of trucks, cars, and airplanes has a nice line of moving thieves and their stolen goods out of the loca area to avoid the short reach of law enforcement. The feds are onto his racket, but they need someone on the inside, and that someone is Robert Preston.

B director Louis King was not as high-profile as his brother Henry, but he knew how to make a fast-paced B movie, and this is one. Naish adopts a comic Italian accent, and effusive and ridiculous one that turns threatening when it comes time to turn the screws on old associates like Pierre Watkins, or George McKay, who bought into Naish's network to keep his trucking business operating. Mary Carlisle provides the feminine half of the inevitable romance, and other people who had been or would eventually become famous include buster Crabbe, Dennis Morgan, Monte Blue, and Regis Toomey.

As the only reviewer fan of B movies wrote, Illegal traffic is a pleasant comedy gangster quite talky, a few light action and car chases, this movie is saved by delicious Mary Carlisle and always charismatic Robert Preston as the tough guy, don't miss the final car chase, it's fast and efficient but too short.

The bad guy in "Illegal Traffic" is played by J. Carrol Naish, an actor who often played villains and ethnic type characters. Here, he plays BOTH...a villain and a guy with a very stereotypical 'Italian' accent...one that sounds much more like Chico Marx than an honest to goodness Italian!

The setup for this story is interesting. Lewis Zomar (Naish) and his partner run a sort of transport company. They will get any crook over the border and out of US jurisdiction...for a hefty percentage of any crook's loot. But Zomar is smart and the federal authorities are having a hard time pinning anything on him. So, they arrange to have two undercover agents infiltrate his organization....though this plan goes seriously awry.

The idea for the story is very good for a B. However, the execution is poor at times. For example, when one Fed is flying a plane, it's obviously a model and makes insanely tight and impossible turns...to the point of being rather comical. Another, and much worse part of the story is when one of the Feds forgets to take his FBI identification card out of his wallet and he's discovered. Can ANY agent be that dumb??? There's also more, including a woman who works hard to help Zomar and then, inexplicably doesn't! It is all pretty inconsequential as a result. Not terrible but sloppy...even for a B.

I am very surprised not to have commented this little crime flick yet. But I am dead sure that I have done it for other Paramount crime programmers from this very era, starring the likes of the early Tony Quinn, Lloyd Nolan, J Caroll Naish, Buster Crabbe. The topic are nearly always the same, I agree, but they are all pretty good time wasters, fast paced in the pure Warner Bros style with Jimmy Cagney or Eddy Robinson. The main directors for those films were mainly Louis King and Bob Florey. No surprise here, folks, just the atmosphere if you like it, not more but that's far enough for me. Just enjoy.

There were others of those little flicks. I am sure they are available some where.