Portland Exposé (1957)

You won't be disappointed!

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Portland Express (1957)Overall, this is often a stilted affair, and it begins and ends with a canned voice-over about Portland, the Oregon city at the center of this unlikely crime scenario. And for people looking for noir, this is not noir at all, though it does have a kind of throwback to some gangster thugs, and there is a good twenty minutes of night stuff that has a noir look.Portland Express is more about American innocence, and the surprise anachronism of these mobsters in fedoras pressuring a cute roadhouse into using their pinball machines. Which leads to bigger pressures. The lead man is a small time movie and later t.v. character, Edward Binns, a solid but unexciting actor, sort of perfect for this solid but unexciting town (back then--now I hear it's solid and exciting). And his daughter is a complete unknown who acts her heart out, and really feels like a teenager on the cusp of womanhood in a realistic way. This matters because she becomes central to the plot, including in a harrowing and almost abusive rape scene (it pushes the violence very hard for a movie of this simplicity). But it's a turning point for Binns, the father, and for the plot, as this likable, ordinary family man goes undercover to get the bad guys.Naturally, we root for him, and see the dismantling of the syndicate. It gets increasingly dark and desperate over time, and a bit unlikely, but you'll still want to watch to the end, when the cavalry arrives--a group of ordinary men in plaid shirts who rush in to save the day. It's not as hilarious as it sounds. There is a quality of really beautiful, ordinary middle-America here that resonates, and that helps show this is really a 1950s movie. It's widescreen black and white, and a genuine slice of its period.

(Some Spoilers) Trying to muscle in on Portland Oregon's taverns and restaurant trade the Seattle Mob at first infiltrates and then takes over the local teamster unions using them to blackmail anyone, depending on the truckers delivering their booze and food products, who doesn't play ball with them.It's when the mobsters started putting pressure on tavern owner George Madison, Edward Binn, that things started to backfire on them. Madison a hard working man and WWII vet at first gave into the mobs demands in buying their exclusive booze, trucked in by the corrupted teamsters, for his customers as well as installing a number of pinball machines. It's when the mob started to press their luck on him that George started to push back.It's when Seattle mobster the hot in the pants, for underage females, Joe, Frank Gorshin, attacked and tried to rape George's teenage daughter Ruthie, Carolyn Craig, that George took matters into his own hands. At first cold cocking the surprised, in George coming to his daughters rescue, Joe and knocking him out cold it was then decided by Joe's bosses to ice him, since he wasn't worth all the trouble that he caused, by laying him on the railroad track, drenched with booze, and run over making it look like he was a drunk who lost his way to the ginmill. Back at the tavern George saw that booze and pinball machines where soon to be replaced with drugs and prostitution in his family oriented establishment and decided, with the cooperation of the local and still uncorrupted police, to go undercover and get the goods on the mob thus putting their sleazy operation out of commission.Using a hidden tape recorder, circa 1957, that was about the size of a lunch-box George started getting enough evidence on the mobsters, by playing along with them, to put them away for life. It's when mob moll Iris, Jeanne Carmen, started to get a little close to George, on the dance floor at his tavern, that she noticed a bulge, not where she expected it to be, under George's clothes that alerted her that he was up to no good and relayed that very important information to her boss.***SPOILERS*** With George now exposed, thanks to Iris, as a police plant the mobsters started to give him the business by working George over in having him tell them when the tape recordings he took of them where hidden. It was when George's daughter Ruthie who had fled Portland, together with her mom and kid brother, for her own safety showed up unexpectedly to attend the senior high-school dance that she together with her pop, George, was held captive by the mobsters. It's when the mobsters threatened to disfigure Ruthie's pretty face with a vile of acid is when George just lost it. With what seemed like superhuman strength George broke loose and took on the entire Portland Mob almost singlehanded until the police arrived not to rescue him but the mobsters whom he was on the verge of annihilating!Filimed entirely in and around the "City of Roses" Portland Oregon the movie "Portland Expose" shows how one man pushed to he brink can become a one man demolition squad to the shock and surprise to those who did the pushing. It was the Portland Mobs misfortune to find that very important lesson out the hard and bare knuckles way!

Former film editor Harold Schuster started his directorial career with that fine film, Wings of the Morning, in 1937. After scoring a huge success with My Friend Flicka in 1943, Schuster slowly but surely (with time out for Disney's So Dear to My Heart in 1948) worked his way to the bottom. And that's exactly where this mostly indifferently directed little exploitation movie would lie, if it were not for a couple of hard-hitting and somewhat disturbing action sequences involving Frank Gorshin and his acid-wielding confederate, which amazingly sneaked past the usually vigilant 1957 censors.This is a film in which the support players steal scenes from the nominal leads right, left and center. True, the dialogue given to Mr Binns and Miss Gregg is as dull as they come, and neither actor has sufficient charisma to overcome the lethargy induced by their predictably ho-hum lines. It's left to the heavies and the minor characters like Jeanne Carmen's heartlessly seductive Iris and Lea Penman's boastful high society madame to give the film class, although twenty-two year old Carolyn Craig interprets her under-age teenager also with memorable skill. True, she is given some effective dialogue, but even when handling the most ordinary lines, she is such a most unusual-looking girl, she immediately rivets the attention. Director Schuster had the good sense to give her plenty of potent close-ups, although they are somewhat undermined by the amount of unwanted attention he lavishes on the undeserving Binns and Craig as well.

This film begins with a rather unnecessary and stuffy prologue. Fortunately, despite this weak introduction, the film turns out to be a very, very tough film indeed--with thugs who are child molesters or threaten to throw acid in people's faces. This is NOT your typical 1950s Film Noir movie, but a hard as nails look at organized crime in a rather unexpected locale--Portland, Oregon.You'll probably notice Virginia Gregg in the female lead. She was seen in 1001 "Dragnet" episodes. Edward Binns, a fine character actor whose name you probably won't recognize plays Gregg's husband--a man who is being forced by the local mob to play ball. Frank Gorshin, in a small but memorable role, plays the rapist who is so vile even the gang is disgusted by him.As for the plot, it's a very familiar one--having been seen in such earlier films as LOAN SHARK and APPOINTMENT WITH DANGER. An honest guy is sick of the mob, so he agrees to join them in order to get evidence to prosecute them. In this case, Binns pretends to be a rather worldly and not too honest man who is interested in moving up in the organization. However, despite being familiar, the film is handled well and is more than just another time-passer.