Walk East on Beacon!

Know how I feel about film noir? Love it to death! To me, it's not so much a genre, more a way of life. The inescapable reality, however, is that in the natural, universal scheme of existence, there is inevitably a percentage of crud at the bottom of the barrel. Indeed, the grating noise of a barrel being scraped, would provide a pertinent soundtrack for this dreary movie.

'Walk East on Beacon!' is a truly dour, dull docu-noir. A movie entirely devoid of personality. There are no strong characters, smart one-liners or wittily deadpan ripostes. In short, a gaggle of good grey men seek to smoke out a gaggle of gruesome greyer men (and women), who, despite being on the same page, exude as much warmth as a Siberian snowstorm in their dealings with each other. The sole striking performance comes from Finlay Currie as the ageing, vulnerable scientific genius, who has defected to the U. S. and is anxious about the plight of his son in East Berlin. Currie is fairly sound, but this is no Abel Magwitch and hints of native Scottish can be detected within his generic Eastern European brogue.

If one scene personifies the movie's relentlessly lacklustre tone, it's a conference room adorned by a group of middle-aged, largely bespectacled Communists, glumly listening to a reel to reel tape recording of Currie waxing lyrical about his revolutionary, life changing breakthrough, at the end of which they exit, with the same blank, glum indifference.

Released when blacklisting was at its peak: As a tirade against the rising tide of Communism, it makes for pretty tedious viewing. A missed opportunity, a damp squib of a picture. Not so much a film noir, more a film gris!

PLOT: Commy spies attempt to gain secrets.

a docu-drama style movie~ This starts as the FBI receive a hot trip about a Communist cell in Boston. WE see the newly arrived KGB contact played by Karl Stepanek who urges the spies to even more ruthless means to get secrets. Finley Currie as the Professor Kefer who is being black mailed by the spies with his son being captive in Berlin by the REDS. MADE with the cooperation of the FBI. Some of the men are actual FBI agents. BASED on story by J Edgar Hoover himself the Crime of the Century a short story in the Readers Digest. BETTER than I expected. Moves along very well and the ADDED "dedication" of the spies to the RED commy cause at times is comical and interesting. MADE at time of the RED SCARE (COMMUNIST) days of the 1950s. I give this 7 out of 10 for interesting COMMY spies inside the USA. Also recommend is the HOUSE on 92nd STREET.

Director Alfred L Werker stands as an indefatigable worker of B pics and he does not disappoint in WALK EAST ON BEACON! - a rather unusual title for a propaganda and FBI procedural piece.

Apart from the professional actor George Murphy and the rather biblical Finlay Currie (who played the part of Peter in QUO VADIS one year earlier) with a Russian or German accent, no known actors, but the action is riveting enough to remove any pressure from generally satisfactory and unassuming acting.

Good photography, tight and believable script (though I failed to grasp the repeated interest in the lady who walked with a "lope", nothing comes of it in the end) and pertinent voiceover.

No masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but interesting to watch as a capsule of a time when politics interfered with the life of citizens and everyone suspected everyone else of commie sympathies.

May the world never have to go through that again... now that Big Brother is watching everyone every minute of every day!

Egomaniac, Hypocrite, and Big Brother J. Edgar Hoover's stain is all over this Red Scare Movie. Another McCarthy Era Propaganda Piece that the Government, in League with Hollywood, pushed on the Public in the early Post War Years. It is a Movie that is Cold and without Emotion, ironically just like the Commies.

Among its many Sins, one is the way it inaccurately equated the Russians with the Nazis for nothing more than analogous Angst. Did anyone remember that it was just a few short Years prior that Germany invaded Russia, and Russia invaded Germany. They hated each other. But in the World of Government Mind Control, that memory is wiped.

This is an interesting Artifact of the Time to be sure, and a reflection on the Temperament. As Entertainment it is so stilted that the whole thing barely has a Heartbeat although it tries, so seriously, to make its case that anything resembling a Human Being is lost in the Fog of the Cold War. If there's still any doubt about the Evil of Hoover and his Megalomania, check out all the dismembered Head Shots of J. Edgar floating about in quite a few of the office Scenes.

Worth a view for Cold War Historians and "Safety for Freedoms" researchers. It is a Movie masquerading as your Friend. Early on the Film mentions how in the USA Citizens go about their Daily Lives freely because of the Bill of Rights. That creepy, prying TV Camera in the Shop was just the beginning. A Harbinger for sure.

An hysterical anti-communist screed dolled up in the drag of a police procedural, Walk East On Beacon simply isn't up to the task of alerting us to the dangers of a Fifth Column in our midst. Well filmed but weedily written (and based on a magazine article by the Dark Prince of the F.B.I., J. Edgar Hoover), the film stars Republican senator-in-waiting George Murphy as a G-Man hot on the heels of a Red sleeper cell. Murphy was never much of an actor, and here he's strictly in Jack Webb just-the-facts-ma'am territory. Location photography in Boston gives the film a boost, but overall Walk East On Beacon! can't match either the red hot emotional power of Pickup On South Street or the creepy intensity of My Son John, two other Red Menace films of the period.