Down Three Dark Streets (1954)

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Broderick Crawford as Agent Ripley takes over three cases for a murdered FBI man in "Down Three Dark Streets," a 1954 film also starring Ruth Roman, Marisa Pavan, Martha Hyer, and Max Showalter.This is one of those police or FBI films done in semi-documentary style that abounded in the '50s. Each woman is involved in a crime; Roman is being threatened with her daughter's life if she doesn't turn over her late husband's insurance money; Pavan is the blind wife of a man jailed for being involved in car theft, but he won't reveal any information about the ring; and Hyer is the girlfriend of a wanted killer who is on the run. When two murders occur, Ripley is convinced they're tied to one of the cases, but which one? Great '50s LA sites are a highlight of this film, along with a suspenseful ending. The story involving Ruth Roman was done as a suspense movie by Blake Edwards later on as "Experiment in Terror" with Glenn Ford as Ripley.There is one major plot hole I must point out. One of the FBI men follows a character to a department store, where she takes a girdle to try on and goes into a dressing room. The operative asks if there's an exit behind the dressing rooms and is told yes, there's a staircase leading to a back entrance. Well, all I can say is, that store must have had hundreds of thousands of dollars in shoplifted merchandise yearly if that was the case.

Moderately interesting programmer made at a time when police procedure was popular on both the big and little screens. The influence of TV's Dragnet is apparent in the stentorian voice-over and the rather feeble attempts at quirky citizen humor. An FBI agent is killed in the line of duty. His chief Broderick Crawford determines that the killer is tied into one of three cases he's investigating. But which one. The narrative follows his sorting through the cases, all the while both he and we wonder which one will lead to the culprit. It's a good premise, but director Laven does little to develop the potential.Movie gains a lot from location photography in and around a burgeoning LA. The final scene makes effective use of that city's landmark "Hollywood" sign, the only film I know to do that. There's a fine performance from Ruth Roman as a beleaguered mother whose child is under threat of kidnap, along with an unusually restrained Crawford as the head agent, a role I suspect recommended him for for the lead in the following year's hit series Highway Patrol. Note the rather gratuitous cheesecake scenes from Roman and the bosomy Martha Hyer. After all, the movies had to do something to get people away from the novelty of their television sets. Nothing special here. Just an easy way to pass a spare 90 or so minutes.

It's "The F.B.I." starring Broderick Crawford, with special guest star Ruth Roman. The film begins promising - you expect a great interwoven, mysterious plot; but, it doesn't really work out that way. Instead, it's an extended TV crime drama, with stuff that may have been a little too sexy and violent for the time (so, couldn't they have put SOME bruise make-up on the blind woman?).The title "Down Three Dark Streets" refers to three seemingly unrelated crimes Mr. Broderick's F.B.I. solves. It seems like you need a notepad to keep track of events, but you'll get along by paying attention to the extortion plot involving Ms. Roman.Performance-wise, it's Roman's film. There are a lot of recognizable faces, though. Martha Hyer gives a Marilyn Monroe-type performance, as directed (Arnold Laven). Other than that, there are some Los Angeles-area location scenes that are very nice to see; the location scenery is the movie's highlight - climaxing by the "HOLLYWOOD sign". **** Down Three Dark Streets (1954) Arnold Laven ~ Ruth Roman, Broderick Crawford, Martha Hyer

Based on a novel by The Gordons called "Case File: F.B.I.", this is a semi-documentary style crime drama from Columbia starring BRODERICK CRAWFORD as a diligent F.B.I. agent John Ripley assigned to crack a few unsolved cases when a fellow agent on the job is killed in the line of duty.RUTH ROMAN, MARISA PAVAN and MARTHA HYER are the three women connected to the cases, all of whom give good performances but Pavan is particularly touching as a blind woman.The documentary style is nicely handled and there's a twist at the end that came as a real surprise to me.Not great, but an interesting example of satisfactory film noir.