Mädchen im Geheimdienst

Raymond Greenleaf is the governor of a generic state. He wants to run for senator, but he has a secret. He's an escaped criminal, and a campaign of that order will reveal it. So machine fixer Raymond Burr applies pressure and gets a girl in the FBI's fingerprint file to remove his card. Burr arranges for everyone else down the line to wind up dead.

The FBI won't stand for its own personnel being killed. They get a line on the original name on the file and assign agents Cesar Romero and George Brent to the case.

There are some fine actors in this, including Audrey Totter in a good-girl role (alas, she's far more interesting in her evil roles in noirs). Other well-known players include Joi Lansing, Byron Foulger, Marie Blake (grandma in THE ADDAMS FAMILY) and O. Z. Whitehead. Under-rated B cinematographer Jack Greenhalgh gets a fine night-time river pursuit, and William Berke directs the film with a nice arc of excitement.

The Lippert organization was not known for producing great movies. They had a chain of theaters, and with the slowdown in post-war B production, they used their connections to set up a releasing organization, including some Korda films, and began their own production with talent fallen on hard times. Although none of their approximately 150 movies, most produced between 1948 and the mid-1950s, can be considered great films, they showcased interesting talent. This is one of their best.

Could this be it? The Holy Grail, the zenith of film noir mediocrity, the quintessential 'B' movie? F. B. I. Girl is no ordinary quickie/cheapie, but comes packed with a gallimaufry of bonus features: Stilted, wooden acting, unintentionally amusing dialogue, two investigators (Romero and Brent) who are about as charismatic as a wet week-end in Widnes and a thoroughly muddled plot, involving the stealing of incriminating fingerprint records.

Ambitious, but corrupt governor, Raymond Greenleaf, in collusion with his ruthless P. R. man, Raymond Burr, decide that the best way to beat a murder rap is....er... to commit more murders. Burr, a character who exudes all the charm of a fox ravaged bin bag, orchestrates the proceedings. His first patsy is Margia Dean. She may hold a responsible position with the F. B. I., but will she be prepared to FIB?

The growing body count produces a priceless sequence. Disguised as a priest, gravel voiced hood, Alexander Pope gains easy access to the merely critically wounded, hospitalized Don Garner, hoping to add a few finishing touches to the job, but events take a wildly unexpected turn, with uproarious results.

Despite having little going for it, F. B. I. Girl works surprisingly well on another level. It never descends to the depths of the gut-wrenchingly, mind numbingly abysmal. Moreover, from its mock military opening score the movie continues along a consistently entertaining, ham-fisted plateau, even raising the temperature by a few degrees for the relatively tense, fast moving finale. All involved appear to be tinkering with the dynamics, the nuts and bolts of the genre, creating, whether by design or not, a finished work, which conveys an air of affectionate parody. Taken in this context, F. B. I. Girl ticks all the boxes and emerges as a must-see vehicle.

This all but lost docu-noir was released By Poverty Row Lippert Productions, shot in just twelve days and directed by William Berke.... This gets better and better! Watch at your earliest opportunity and neatly avert years of regret.

CODA: Startling stat. In 1951 six million Americans had police records. There must be a message (in a bottle) for all of us.

A politician needs to tamper with FBI files to advance his career so uses his fixer, a menacing Burr, to influence the girls working there to do his dirty work; these plans go awry and turn deadly. Our stalwart agents Romero and Brent try to figure out what's going on as another FBI girl (Totter) gets roped in. The plot becomes knotty and hazy at times and there are a few coincidences thrown in but we are treated to quite a number of memorable and unusual scenes as well as an action-packed finale that must have blown this B-movie's budget. An entertaining ride with the players taking the roles quite seriously despite the clunky plot mechanics. 6.5/10.

Starting with its vistas of Washington, D.C. and one of those damned anthems, FBI Girl looks like another patriotic pageant ad majorem gloriam J. Edgar Hoover. But happily it runs low on idolatry and long on plot, and it turns out to be not only fun but a wee bit irreverent in spots, too.

Its opening gambit proves a bit of a stretch. In Capitol City in a nearby state, venerable Governor Raymond Greenleaf plans a run for the Senate. But if a federal investigating committee takes his fingerprints, his past identity as (what else?) a convicted murderer will come to light. He goes to his shadowy boss (who else?) Raymond Burr, a slick PR man who pulls filthy strings. Burr arranges for a young woman working in the Bureau to pull the incriminating file, after which she's ruthlessly rubbed out. In come unlikely agents Cesar Romero and George Brent to probe the mysterious murder; they enlist the aid of Audrey Totter, another clerk in the same department. But there's another twist: Totter's fiancé (Tom Drake), an ambitious young lobbyist, has close ties to Burr's organization....

Bizarre touches abound that seem inadvertent but together add up to a faintly subversive thread running through the movie. In an era when even long-married couples slumbered in chaste twin beds, two of Totter's roommates share a double (they seem dim-witted, as well, as do most of the low-level FBI personnel encountered). Later, these two blondes entertain Romero, who's waiting for Totter to return; they watch television, and we watch with them, as comics Tommy Noonan and Peter Marshall perform an extended routine. Now and again, the script hones a line to a sharp edge: When one of his henchmen tells Burr not to worry because when he was on the lam in Georgia, even the bloodhounds couldn't catch him, Burr purrs, `You've a stronger smell about you today.'

FBI Girl boasts a strong cast and a good plot, and it manages to rise a few rungs above most of the other cheap crime-documentary titles of its era. Its most arresting aspect lies in sketching the avaricious and powerful culture of lobbyists and spin-meisters that was starting to coalesce in the nation's capital and becoming, in effect a shadow government. Boy, oh boy – doesn't THAT date the movie.

As usual for director William Berke, who had been producing and/or directing low-budget crime, action, and western films since the mid-30s, FBI Girl creates a nice hard-boiled feel, moves quickly, and still plays well today. It's the story of a crooked governor who tries, with the help of his evil henchman Raymond Burr (always convincing as a sadistic heavy!), to cover his criminal activities decades before by having a set of fingerprints stolen from FBI headquarters, fingerprints that would establish his true identity. Ace FBI agent Cesar Romero (who also intrudes once or twice with narration) discovers a few details that don't add up in a seemingly unrelated case, and the plot takes off from there. The strong cast--Burr, Romero, George Brent, Audrey Totter, Tom Drake-- helps a lot, and overall it's a solid "B"-programmer from the underrated Lippert Pictures. There's also a strange sequence where some of the characters are watching the comedy team of Tommy Noonan (of Promises, Promises fame) and Peter Marshall (of Hollywood Squares fame) perform on television! That's a novel way of working them into the film (usually there would be a scene where the characters go to a nightclub; however, this was no doubt cheaper to film than a nightclub scene). Recommended for fans of post-war crime films and early Television police shows. By the way, the scene depicted on the movie poster-- of Audrey Totter standing seductively wearing a form-fitting outfit with a slit up the side and holding a gun--appears nowhere in the film (she's not an agent, but a clerk, and certainly would not be holding a gun!), but it looks great!