Undertow

Tony (Scott Brady) is the perfect patsy. He's an ex-con and the Chicago police are more than willing to believe the worst of him. So, when some unknown people kidnap him, shoot him and set him up for his future father-in-law's murder, the case seems pretty air-tight. However, like so many noir films, he investigates the case himself and aims to prove his innocence. Along the way, he gets the help from a nice lady and even from a cop.

"Undertow" is an excellent and enjoyable film. While Peggy Dow's character makes no sense (why would anyone help a wanted man when they barely know them?!), the overall story is quite well made and keeps your attention. It has some excellent twists and the acting is quite good despite the actors mostly being second-tier. It sure helped having the excellent director William Castle in charge, as he had a habit of making the most of lower budgets.

The plot is actually impressingly ingenious, as it is impossible to guess what it is all about, and like the poor framed victim and failed wooer you feel inclined to just give it all up, but there are two dames involved in this, one in the thick of it and one by accident. Eventually the one with the many children carries home the prize.

The music adds to the increasing quality of this very suggestive noir, and several composers appear to have been at it, among others Frank Skinner and Miklos Rosza. William Castle directed many films, mostly B, the "Whistler" series and the "Crime Doctor" series among others, but this should be one of the best ones. For once the brevity of the film is an asset, because it increases the density and the brilliant conciseness of the account. The plot is brilliantly contrived, like a perfect jig-saw puzzle, which is impossible to identify before it is finished, as the clue to the mystery arrives better late than never. The actors make good performances, Scott Brady on the rack at the mercy of Dorothy Hart, while Peggy Dow is a relief. You get misgivings from the beginning as it is in the racket of gambling, starting off at Reno and continuing in Chicago with hoodlums and everything, and all your worst suspicions gradually come true. But it is an efficient thriller and well worth watching, for all its extreme unpleasantness of worries and suspense.

There's more to Undertow than the first screen credit of young `Roc' Hudson (in fact his tiny role as a police detective barely registers). It's one of a handful of noirs that William Castle directed before turning his attention to, and making his name in, gimmicky schlock. While none of them is so good as his first – When Strangers Marry, with Robert Mitchum and Kim Hunter – they're more than passable. As is Undertow.

Scott Brady looks like Lawrence Tierney's kid brother (which in fact he was). In Reno after a stint at a mountain lodge he wants to buy and run, he bumps into an old pal from mobbed-up Chicago (John Russell). They compare the diamond rings they've bought for their respective fiancees, though that doesn't stop Brady from flirting with a girl (Peggy Dow) he met in a casino and shares a flight home with. Since the police meet him at the plane, any extracurricular romance comes to naught, so Brady dutifully hooks up with his intended (Dorothy Hart). Next thing, he's taken for a ride and framed for the murder of unseen crime boss Big Jim, who happens to be Hart's uncle. Trying to clear himself while on the lam, he enlists Dow's help; he also happens to stumble onto the fact that his fiancee and Russell's are the same woman....

Undertow is pure story, competently enough executed if devoid of anything particular to lodge in the memory. It preserves evidence of why Brady stayed in his brother's imposing shadow, and leads one to wonder why Hart made so few movies (though, of her handful of credits, roughly half are noirs). While not an essential title in the noir cycle by any means, Undertow was one of the hundreds of titles that went into making it a cycle, and far from the weakest of them.

Today ,William Castle is known as the man who bought Ira Levin's "Rosemary's baby " rights and produced one of the best horror movies of all time.

"Undertow" has a quite derivative screenplay but the director made the best of it and any film noir buff can give it a chance :it thoroughly deserves it.It features at least one unforgettable scene: the chase in the long corridor which gives you goose flesh.Of the two female leads,I prefer Dorothy Hart to the rather bland Peggy Dow.

In the 1968 movie Castle produced ,there was a corridor which played a prominent part too.

William Castle was always a B movie director .His talent -amounting almost to genius -elevated some of his 50's work to the status of "event movies" but works like "The Tingler" "Homicidal"and "Macabre"were nothing but glorified B pictures wrapped in the razzle -dazzle of showmanship.

"Undertow"makes no pretense at being other than what it is-a brisk programmer for the bottom half of double features-and satisfies on this level Scott Brady is Tony Reagon,an ex-con going straight who is framed for the death of a mob boss,Big Jim,and the movie deals with Reagon's fight to clear his name with the help of a sympathetic cop and a schoolteacher with whom he struck up a friendship while en route to Chicago where the bulk of the movie is set.

Good use of the Chicago locations and a brisk pace compensate for moderate acting.Its predictable but narrative pace stops it getting tiresome