Pickup Alley

Victor Mature stars in Pickup Alley as a drug enforcement officer who has his professional and personal life combined in this film. His sister Dorothy Alison is strangled by Trevor Howard who is a big drug syndicate kingpin that everyone knows about, but who has successfully kept a very low profile. All kinds of police agencies are looking for Howard and now Mature has a personal reason to get him.

Thinking she killed Howard's partner his moll Anita Ekberg is also on the run. She might be the one to lead Mature to Howard so he tails her across several international cities back to New York where the climax takes place.

This idea had already been tried and far more successfully in the Dick Powell noir classic To The Ends Of The Earth where Powell was the drug enforcement agent with no personal axe to grind who follows a drug shipment. We get to see several glimpses of major cities in Europe and of course New York. Nothing that really registers a decent impression.

Pickup Alley was an OK second feature, but will never be a classic. Fans of Mature, Ekberg, and Howard will be satisfied. Best in the film in a small role is Bonar Colleano, exiled American gangster who lives by his wits both as souvenir salesman in Rome and peddler of information to those with a price.

A film unconsistently complicated, which thing adds nothing to the plot, but rather deprives it of clearness and smoothness.

A film in which all the faces look the same (apart from V. Mature's and A. Ekberg's, the only woman among the characters), so you don't really know, at times, who is doing what.

A film with many guns shootings, in whose - as it happens in so many films of the same genre - rarely any man of some importance happens to be shot. Bulletts completely obey the filmmakers' will.

A film where the final chase brings no thrill whatsoever, as no thrills are to be expected from the whole movie. It's not really a whodunit: you know from the start who the villain is, you only have to be patient enough for him to get caught.

Locations range from New York, Paris, Lisbon, Rome, Athens. Curiously enough, when in Rome you can hear Italian phrases pronounced with a strong American accent, while when in Athens, the backround chatter is mostly in pure Italian, and repeatedly proposed in loops of a few seconds' duration. Sometimes the filmmakers get a little confused, and even signs and labels, when in Greece, are in Italian.

A law-and-order thriller focusing on the international narcotics trade, Interpol (aka Pickup Alley) harks back to such dire warnings as Port of New York and To The Ends of the Earth. It looks forward, too. Courtesy of co-producer Albert (Cubby) Broccoli, who five years hence would issue the first film in the deathless 007 franchise, Dr. No, this British-made movie serves as a brief, black-and-white preview of the trans-global intrigues James Bond would soon be set to smashing.

The surly secret agent here is drug-enforcement officer Victor Mature, and his motives are not merely professional: Not only is his `kid sister' hopelessly hooked to the needle, but in the pre-credits opening scene, a female colleague ends up strangled with her own scarf by heroin kingpin Trevor Howard, an arch and urbane adversary who flourishes a cigarette holder, like Charles Grey's Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever. In pursuit, Mature jets from New York to London and thence to Lisbon, Rome, Athens, Naples and back to the States.

There's even an exotic Bondgirl (Anita Ekberg), shanghaied into working against her former boss, and an amusing local helpmate (Bonar Colleano) as an expatriate Yank peddling junk and souvenirs to tourists in the Eternal City. He first pops up before an excursion into the Catacombs, where death proves to be not always ancient. Similar set-pieces – chases across rooftops and up and down steep streets – enliven other ports of call.

But, like many of the Bond movies, Interpol comes at you in sections. We cool down from one diversion in anticipation of the next. But there's not much thought given to a determining plot-line or sustaining mood. And the major characters aren't given much in the way of, well, character; to make matters worse, they're barely allowed to interact. Most of what Interpol has to offer was already done earlier in the noir cycle (occasionally by Mature and even Howard), or would be done better in the splashier spectacles of the 1960s. And let's face it: Apart from her frolic in the fountain in La Dolce Vita, Ekberg would never amount to much of a fixture in film history.

This was an interesting film which starred Victor Mature, (Charles Sturgis) who was a US Narcotics Agent working with Interpol in order to catch a large dope smuggling operation. Gina Broger, (Anita Ekberg) played a young gal who was working with a big shot dope king, Frank McNally, (Trevor Howard) and was only working with him because he kept her against her will and would not let her go. There is plenty of travel into Lisbon, Greece and New York and it seemed at times that Charles Sturgis was running around in circles. Trevor Howard gave a great supporting role along with Anita Ekberg, but this film was definitely a low budget film and because this was a 1957 film, the gals all wore skirts down to their ankles.

In the 1950s, American actors were in demand in European films. It seems that it was far cheaper to make movies there and by bringing in one or two big-name or semi-big name American actors the movie would have greater international appeal. So the likes of Richard Basehart, Anthony Quinn and many other mostly B-list actors made there way to Europe, though a few, such as Alan Ladd, were big name stars. Almost as big as Ladd at that time was Victor Mature and here he stars as, what else, an American in Europe!

The film finds American Cop, Charles Sturgis (Mature) in Europe to try to break up an international drug smuggling outfit. His part in the film was at best mildly interesting...as mostly he played the stereotypical angry, blustering American. What WAS interesting was the leader of the baddies. While you don't think of Trevor Howard in such a role, he was vicious and very exciting to watch...and sadly he was barely in the film! As a result of this and a mediocre script, the film has 'time-passer' written all over it and nothing more.