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.

Don DeFore is a Secret Service agent whose investigation of a major counterfeiting ring that leads him to a commercial hotel in Los Angeles and its manager, Andrea King.

There are flashes of brilliance in the third and last movie directed by Boris Ingster, but they look to be matters of the professional he was working with, particularly the final sequence as Miss King flees from a wounded DeFore in a welter of rail tracks and bridges. After a downbeat ending, we get a jaunty little tune over the closing credits which is just weird. And Gerald Mohr's narration adds a sententious matte finish to the entire proceedings. DeFore is adequate in the role, Miss King is very good, as is George Tobias as a suspicious henchman. Ingster later went into television on the production side, and died in 1978 at the age of 74.

This is a Rivers Brother's production and Boris Ingster's second film noir. Famous for stretching a penny, this film created an interesting role for Andrea King, who plays badass gang boss Nora Craig.

The overall story begins with a narrator discussing the entry into the Korean War and concluding with the importance and the power of currency. Then we join an elderly dying prisoner who manages to make counterfeit plates in prison and smuggle them out with an unsuspecting priest. For the rest of film we follow a secret service agent on behalf of the U. S. Treasury as he hunts down and attempts to infiltrate a counterfeiting gang.

One of the best scenes in the film is the final scene that involves a chase between our agent Don DeFore's John Riggs / Nick Starnes and lady boss Nora. There is fantastic lighting and views as Nora climbs a bridge over the train tracks, shooting back and winging Riggs...before the ultimate climax. One snaffu of note is the change in arms having been shot, from right to left.

I also really enjoyed the smuggling out of the plates, which was pretty elaborate.

While not my favorite noir, worth a watch for film noir aficionados and definitely for fans of Andrea King.

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.

Pacy T-Man movie, one of only three directed by Boris Ingster, whose STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR is held by many to be the film which kicked off the 'film noir' cycle. A narrative voiceover lends a pseudo-documentary air to the tale of a square-jawed treasury agent, John Riggs (Don DeFore), who is tasked with cracking a counterfeiting ring initiated by a dying master forger from inside his jail cell. Once on the trail, Riggs adopts a false identity in the hope of ingratiating himself with the crooks, and this brings him into contact with larcenously inclined hotel manageress Nora Craig (Andrea King). Although this is fairly standard stuff, with the rather annoying voiceover failing to ratchet up the tension as it did in Kubrick's THE KILLING, Russell Harlan's often moody location cinematography (see also GUN CRAZY & RIOT IN CELL BLOCK 11) and King's hardboiled femme, together with one or two nifty, if contrived, twists make this a worthwhile diversion for fans of noir obscura.