SOuthside 1-1000

I admit I missed the part where this particular phone number was mentioned though I did hear others.

This 1950 film was directed by Boris Ingster, actually known as a writer and tv producer. I bet his only other directing credit is Stranger on the Third Floor.

Expert counterfeit plate engraver Eugene Deane (Morris Ankrum) is serving a prison sentence where he spends reading the Bible. However, part of the Bible is cut out so he can continue to make counterfeit plates. He packages them and sneaks them out through an unknowing priest.

When it's discovered he's still on the job, FBI agent John Riggs (Dom Defore) infiltrates the gang as a wealthy criminal who wants to buy a huge amount of counterfeit currency. He becomes involved with a woman (Andrea King) who works at the hotel where he is staying.

Deane is a dying man and, while being transported to a care facility, he escapes and makes his way to the gang, putting Riggs in danger.

Typical FBI procedural film. Crime dramas like this were often narrated, making the films semi-documentary. I've seen tons of them, and I have to say this one is the most heavily narrated I've ever seen. The opening narration about the Korean war, Communism, and the soundness of the dollar was nearly enough to stop watching.

The most interesting thing occurs when Riggs sends one of the thieves out with a $10 bill (carrying a help message) to buy food. Well what didn't they buy - a bunch of sandwiches, beer, pizza - it came to $4.49. That's $60.05 today. They may have overpaid.

The US Secret Service is always on the lookout for fake money. They follow it all the way to San Quentin where dying prisoner engraver Eugene Deane had created plates for gangsters on the outside.

The first half has the continuous narration explaining the investigation. I don't buy that an inmate created the plates inside his cell. I get the noir-ish intention of bringing in the penal system. It wants the dramatic heat, but I found it rather outlandish. Maybe it's ripped from a true story, but I highly doubt it. With that bad starting point, I'm watching the rest side-eyed. I never full got into it.

Southside 1-1000 has to work hard to wash out the sour taste left by its obligatory, patriotic opening: Stock battle footage runs under a voice-over linking the importance of a sound national currency to the Korean conflict (then playing at a theater of war near you) and the diabolical, all-encompassing threat of Communist domination. Whew! (It was the early cold-war era, and viewers were all but required to swear a loyalty oath before they could enjoy even a B-programmer.) Unluckily, it doesn't work hard enough.

Locked up in a federal pen, a top-notch forger pores over his Bible until lights out, when he whisks out his engraving tools and etches the plates for `queer.' Smuggled out, they go on the presses turning out counterfeit bills to be uttered at race tracks and Vegas poker parlors. G-Man Don DeFore (an avuncular figure familiar from television - Ozzie and Harriet, Hazel) goes undercover to track down and infiltrate the source of the funny money. Middleman Barry Kelley goes down (literally, through a window) but the brains of the operation stay at large. Then, as a big-spending good-time Charley, DeFore catches the eye of Andrea King, daughter of the old jailbird. But his cover is blown at his moment of greatest peril....

The director, Boris Ingster, occupies a curious niche in Hollywood lore. In 1940, with Stranger on the Third Floor, he gave the public an elliptical, dreamlike suspense movie that came to be regarded by many fans as the very first film noir. That's a tough call to make, and at any rate Ingster can hardly be counted among the noir maestros (in fact, he directed but three movies). He returned to the cycle as it was peaking and had even begun to cannibalize earlier successes.

Despite two or three sequences that rise a notch or two above the pedestrian, Southside 1-1000, can only be graded ho-hum. The best thing in it has to be Andrea King, but she's allowed to bare her fangs fully only too briefly at the end. And while its numerical title remains so evocative of the noir series as a whole (Call Northside 777, Dial 1119, 99 River Street, 711 Ocean Drive), Southside 1-1000 simply warms over material than had been often traversed over the few years previous, most remarkably by Anthony Mann in T-Men.

(1950) Southside 1-1000 CRIME DRAMA DOCU DRAMA/ SUSPENSE

There's a boring 15 minute intro spoke by the narrator before it centers on a known counterfeiter named Deane (Morris Ankrum) to which it shows how it appears him reading his bible in his jail cell, But upon looking closely it appears he is just putting the final touches on metal plates hidden in the cut out inside his bible before he passes it on to an oblivious unsuspecting pastor who has an appointment to see a supposedly sick patient. When more counterfeit money are beginning to surface, the head of the treasury department, Hughes (G. Pat Collins) then appoints secret service agent, John Riggs (Don DeFore) to be in charge of the case. Because Riggs are aware about Deano's criminal history, he then decides to check his jail cell, presuming that is where the metal counterfeit plates had originally originated from before he goes and sees him. He then tells him he found the tools he may have used to make the metal plates as well as the bible he carved to make them in. But because Deano does not have much time to live, he refuses the deal that was offered to him to tell Riggs the names who own the plates now. The set up is quite long but there is also a weasel who hangs around in sports stadiums and by luck he happens to be carrying fake money on him. He cooperates and it then leads him to a cigar store only to tail an overweight man, Bill Evans (Barry Kelley). And just as he was about to board onto a plane, Riggs and authorities then detain him, and charged him for transporting counterfeit money. He of course, gets eventually gets knocked out for getting himself caught, leading the star Riggs to go undercover under the name, Nick Starnes. After Evan's wife let him go through his things, and found tailor made suits that is linked to a particular hotel. It is there he meets, and gets accustomed to a young lady who works at the hotel of several duties, her name is Nora Craig (Andrea King).

The tone is similar to other docu drama films with the narrator describing to the viewers what happened such as "The FBI Story" and "Down Three Dark Streets" to which they show some of the procedure and techniques this is one of those films except that it was predictable at times and felt long despite the short run time but it could be the result of me watching many films.

It's a noir pseudo-documentary counterfeiting crime drama set in 1950 in Washington, D. C. and Los Angeles, California. Secret Service agent John Riggs (Don Defore) tries to track a counterfeiting ring using high-quality plates engraved by Eugene Deane (Morris Ankrum), who is serving a prison term. One lead, Bill Evans (Barry Kelley), dies before Riggs can track Evans' boss. So he goes undercover as a principal in a large Boston bank robbery. He meets gang enforcer, Reggie (George Tobias), and an intriguing hotel manager, Nora Craig (Andrea King). A final climactic confrontation resolves the issue in favor of the Feds.

"Southside 1-1000" (one of the phone numbers called in the film) is a workmanlike story that's never convincing. Don DeFore doesn't do convincing noir. The film is hindered by a bizarre patriotic Korean War plug that morphs into a Feds-can-do-no-wrong introduction. George Tobias is a good thug, and Andrea King is OK as the femme fatale, but she has no chemistry with DeFore. Reviewer Dennis Schwartz said the film reminds him of the old "Dragnet" TV series, and the narration does have that feel.