Les Filles du service secret

You want to talk about dated - the sight of people going through paper files of people's fingerprints - wow.

Something else dated - there was a time when someone planning to run for governor was concerned about an old murder he committed under another name being discovered when his fingerprints are run. I guess back then if you had a record, it would be difficult to be elected.

In order to keep his secret, the card with the fingerprints has to be stolen. Pressure is brought to bear on a man to make his sister steal the card.

Several murders follow.

Done in the semidocumentary style of the day, the film stars Cesar Romero, George Brent, Audrey Totter, and Raymond Burr.

One thing I noticed immediately- one of the members of a particularly awful TV act was none other than Hollywood Squares host Peter Marshall.

Cesar, Audrey, and George had seen better days as this was a strictly B movie. Raymond Burr was looking toward a bright future in television.

As usual for director William Berke, who had been producing and/or directing low-budget crime, action, and western films since the mid-30s, FBI Girl creates a nice hard-boiled feel, moves quickly, and still plays well today. It's the story of a crooked governor who tries, with the help of his evil henchman Raymond Burr (always convincing as a sadistic heavy!), to cover his criminal activities decades before by having a set of fingerprints stolen from FBI headquarters, fingerprints that would establish his true identity. Ace FBI agent Cesar Romero (who also intrudes once or twice with narration) discovers a few details that don't add up in a seemingly unrelated case, and the plot takes off from there. The strong cast--Burr, Romero, George Brent, Audrey Totter, Tom Drake-- helps a lot, and overall it's a solid "B"-programmer from the underrated Lippert Pictures. There's also a strange sequence where some of the characters are watching the comedy team of Tommy Noonan (of Promises, Promises fame) and Peter Marshall (of Hollywood Squares fame) perform on television! That's a novel way of working them into the film (usually there would be a scene where the characters go to a nightclub; however, this was no doubt cheaper to film than a nightclub scene). Recommended for fans of post-war crime films and early Television police shows. By the way, the scene depicted on the movie poster-- of Audrey Totter standing seductively wearing a form-fitting outfit with a slit up the side and holding a gun--appears nowhere in the film (she's not an agent, but a clerk, and certainly would not be holding a gun!), but it looks great!

Could this be it? The Holy Grail, the zenith of film noir mediocrity, the quintessential 'B' movie? F. B. I. Girl is no ordinary quickie/cheapie, but comes packed with a gallimaufry of bonus features: Stilted, wooden acting, unintentionally amusing dialogue, two investigators (Romero and Brent) who are about as charismatic as a wet week-end in Widnes and a thoroughly muddled plot, involving the stealing of incriminating fingerprint records.

Ambitious, but corrupt governor, Raymond Greenleaf, in collusion with his ruthless P. R. man, Raymond Burr, decide that the best way to beat a murder rap is....er... to commit more murders. Burr, a character who exudes all the charm of a fox ravaged bin bag, orchestrates the proceedings. His first patsy is Margia Dean. She may hold a responsible position with the F. B. I., but will she be prepared to FIB?

The growing body count produces a priceless sequence. Disguised as a priest, gravel voiced hood, Alexander Pope gains easy access to the merely critically wounded, hospitalized Don Garner, hoping to add a few finishing touches to the job, but events take a wildly unexpected turn, with uproarious results.

Despite having little going for it, F. B. I. Girl works surprisingly well on another level. It never descends to the depths of the gut-wrenchingly, mind numbingly abysmal. Moreover, from its mock military opening score the movie continues along a consistently entertaining, ham-fisted plateau, even raising the temperature by a few degrees for the relatively tense, fast moving finale. All involved appear to be tinkering with the dynamics, the nuts and bolts of the genre, creating, whether by design or not, a finished work, which conveys an air of affectionate parody. Taken in this context, F. B. I. Girl ticks all the boxes and emerges as a must-see vehicle.

This all but lost docu-noir was released By Poverty Row Lippert Productions, shot in just twelve days and directed by William Berke.... This gets better and better! Watch at your earliest opportunity and neatly avert years of regret.

CODA: Startling stat. In 1951 six million Americans had police records. There must be a message (in a bottle) for all of us.

For a Lippert Production, this sports a cast of A-picture performers. George Brent and Cesar Romero are FBI men. Audrey Totter, still at her prime and looking lovely, helps the Bureau out. Raymond Burr is a villain. Tom Drake plays a good guy. And hey! It even has Joi Landsing!

The plot is only slightly more than routine: A weak governor has a criminal past. His fingerprints could reveal that. So Burr sets out to switch those fingerprints around. At any cost.

As a sidelight, this movie features three actors who are now known to have been gay: Burr was not open about it. Romero took few pains to keep it quiet. Drake, Judy Garland's "boy next-door" -- I don't know. Not much is known about his life other than that proclivity.

This coincidence has no effect on the film, which is surprisingly good for something that was obviously made on the cheap. But it's a footnote to the sociological history of Hollywood.

Starting with its vistas of Washington, D.C. and one of those damned anthems, FBI Girl looks like another patriotic pageant ad majorem gloriam J. Edgar Hoover. But happily it runs low on idolatry and long on plot, and it turns out to be not only fun but a wee bit irreverent in spots, too.

Its opening gambit proves a bit of a stretch. In Capitol City in a nearby state, venerable Governor Raymond Greenleaf plans a run for the Senate. But if a federal investigating committee takes his fingerprints, his past identity as (what else?) a convicted murderer will come to light. He goes to his shadowy boss (who else?) Raymond Burr, a slick PR man who pulls filthy strings. Burr arranges for a young woman working in the Bureau to pull the incriminating file, after which she's ruthlessly rubbed out. In come unlikely agents Cesar Romero and George Brent to probe the mysterious murder; they enlist the aid of Audrey Totter, another clerk in the same department. But there's another twist: Totter's fiancé (Tom Drake), an ambitious young lobbyist, has close ties to Burr's organization....

Bizarre touches abound that seem inadvertent but together add up to a faintly subversive thread running through the movie. In an era when even long-married couples slumbered in chaste twin beds, two of Totter's roommates share a double (they seem dim-witted, as well, as do most of the low-level FBI personnel encountered). Later, these two blondes entertain Romero, who's waiting for Totter to return; they watch television, and we watch with them, as comics Tommy Noonan and Peter Marshall perform an extended routine. Now and again, the script hones a line to a sharp edge: When one of his henchmen tells Burr not to worry because when he was on the lam in Georgia, even the bloodhounds couldn't catch him, Burr purrs, `You've a stronger smell about you today.'

FBI Girl boasts a strong cast and a good plot, and it manages to rise a few rungs above most of the other cheap crime-documentary titles of its era. Its most arresting aspect lies in sketching the avaricious and powerful culture of lobbyists and spin-meisters that was starting to coalesce in the nation's capital and becoming, in effect a shadow government. Boy, oh boy – doesn't THAT date the movie.