Illegal Traffic

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.