Rent Underworld U.S.A. (1961)

Revenge Noir (spoiler). - Underworld U.S.A. review by Steve

Micro-budgeted, late period film noir that owes a stylistic debt to the Warner Brothers gangster films of the '30s. It's a revenge story about a boy who witnesses his adored but no-good dad gunned down by the mob and swears to get even. When he grows up to be played by Cliff Robertson, he joins the gang to get close the killers, giving the audience a window into how they operate.

The rackets still control gambling and protection and break unions, but have insidiously spread into juvenile crime, like teenage prostitution and selling narcotics at the schoolgate. As was typical in postwar gangster films, the mafia are a semi-legitimate business which operates in plain sight but keeps some business off the books.

Sam Fuller characteristically punches low. It's set among the lowlifes, the criminals and the jailbirds who prey on the vulnerable. It is compelling because we want to see these sordid pimps and pushers and strongarm killers get summarily sawn off... But the revenger isn't a hero. He's a psychopath driven by his personal demons rather than the greater good. The father he avenges was also no good.

This is a low budget film big on ostentatious style. When the dying Robertson staggers down main street with a bullet in his back and crashes into a bin marked 'Keep Your City Clean' we could be back in the symbolist, b&w world of Little Caesar. Previously, Fuller made his noirs on location, but this is shot in the studio on threadbare sets. Robertson is too old and there is an obscure support cast. But Fuller makes plenty out of very little.