RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Joanna Mccarty Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Karl Ericsson The buddy film was not invented with Newman and Redford. Long Before, these two actors hit it off together splendidly. As far as I know, they sadly never repeated the experience. What a pity! The plot takes second seat in all this. You really root for these two guys. Maybe Gordon Douglas drew a Little from his experience with Laurel and Hardy - I don't know but the Chemistry between O'Keefe and Hayward works to such delight. The film is otherwise the usual cloak-and-dagger in which the heroes are in reality the villains and the other way around. Don't bother about that.

clanciai This is one of the best espionage films ever made, for being so perfectly clever, realistic and actual in its day for the crisis of atomic secrets being smuggled to the Soviet Union, which really set the cold war off. Advanced nuclear technology is being smuggled out out from an extremely well guarded and sealed up atomic research centre, and it's impossible to understand how this is done. Five top scientists are the only ones privy to what is going on, and one of them is a traitor. Two of them are lovers, as one of them is a very beautiful woman. Raymond Burr is the very subtle villain here, he appears from the start and leads the way to the crisis and the ultimate meltdown, but the development to that climax is very careful and slow. As Dennis O'Keefe as the leading FBI investigator can't make head or tails of it on his own, a Scotland Yard agent is imported (Louis Hayward, always dashing,) and with his help they gradually approach the mystery. He even takes a job as a laundry worker to help things out, which nonetheless leads to serious trouble.It's a subtle thriller, and the final solution to the mystery couldn't have been more cleverly contrived, while the developed crisis on the way is no easy ordeal.

bsmith5552 Prior to and during the Second World War, Hollywood was preoccupied with the Nazis infiltrating American industry and stealing secrets. Following the war, the focus shifted to the threat of communism."Walk a Crooked Mile" was one of the first, if not the first Hollywood film to deal with the so-called "red menace". Produced by Edward Small and directed by Gordon Douglas, the film is presented in a docu-drama style complete with voice over narration (by Reed Hadley). You could call it a film-noir but although it contains many elements of that genre, it is really more of spy mystery.Atomic secrets are being stolen and smuggled out of the country by communist interests from the Atomic plant at Lakeview, California. Secret formulas are turning up embedded in paintings abroad. One such painting turns up in Great Britain and Scotland Yard sends Inspector "Scotty" Grayson (Louis Hayward) to America to work with the FBI to ferret out the spies, where the FBI team is headed up by Agent Daniel O'Hara (Dennis O'Keefe).After an FBI agent is murdered, O'Hara and Grayson discover foreign agent Anton Radcheck (Philip Van Zandt) might be involved. After Radcheck is murdered they learn that the artist painting the suspect pictures is foreign agent Igor Braun (Onslow Stevens). Because the secret formulas are turning up "hot off the press" as it were, the boys deduce that there must me a mole planted within the atomic plant.The suspects include the Board members of the plant headed by Dr. Townsend (Art Baker). The others include the alluring Dr. Toni Neva (Louise Allbritton), ex German scientist Dr. von Stolb (Carl Esmond), Dr. Forrest (Lowell Gilmore) and Dr. Allen (Charles Evans).After a working over by the brutish Krebbs (Raymond Burr) the boys escape and are able unmask the internal spy.Although the foreign interest isn't named, we can deduce from the names of the villains that the U.S.S.R. was the likely culprit.Dennis O'Keefe had just appeared in two excellent films directed by Anthony Mann, "T-Men (1947)" and "Raw Deal (1948)" and was the real star of this film. Hayward, in my opinion, was not convincing enough as the Scotland Yard detective. He was more at home as a swashbuckler. Since there is no "femme fatale" love interest, Louise Allbritton is sadly wasted as a scientist. A slim Raymond Burr though, turns in another of his many pre-Perry Mason brutal villain roles."Walk a Crooked Mile" would signal the beginning of Hollywood's anti-communist era.

Robert J. Maxwell "The House on 92nd Street" -- a paean to the FBI's anti-Nazi effort during the war -- begat a host of similarly structured films. There is some kind of MacGuffin, often involving microfilm, winding up "in the wrong hands" and being smuggled out of the country. There is the FBI at the center of the story, successfully unraveling the mystery. The FBI uses awesomely modern technology, such as spy cameras, one-way mirrors, hidden microphones, and files containing thousands of fingerprints. The FBI are business-like but they're good Joes too, wisecracking with one another without ever forgetting their mission. The enemy are cold-blooded, gruff, don't say hello to one another, never smile except wryly, sacrifice one of their own at the drop of a solecism, and are clever in the way that sewer rats are clever. Narration invariably by the stentorian baritone of Reed Hadley.Reed Hadley narrates this one too, coming several years after "The House on 92nd Street." At Lakeview Laboratory, somebody seems to be smuggling out confidential formulae about rockets, trajectories, nuclear physics, the secret ingredients of Coca-Cola, and such to a spy -- Russians, this time around, not Nazis -- who then PAINTS THEM into a landscape of San Francisco and ships them to another spy in London. And so on and so forth.Dennis O'Keefe is the agent in charge of the investigation. Louis Hayward is the Scotland Yard detective who uncovers the plot and comes to the states to work with the FBI. They both had leads in minor pictures but they were steady and reliable actors. Onslow Stevens plays a character whose name is Igor Braun. I leave it to you to guess whether this is one of the good guys or the bad guys. That's -- Igor -- Braun. Raymond Burr is a plump, bearded heavy. He doesn't make any jokes but neither do any of the other rats. He's satisfactorily sadistic. Tamara Shayne, as an innocent landlady, gives the best performance in the film. Art Baker, as head of the laboratory, has a voice made for radio.It's all terribly dated and formulaic but I kind of enjoyed it. Gordon Douglas keeps things moving along, nobody torpedoes the movie, the acting is okay, and the mystery is rather interesting, if implausible.Nice, minor job.