Undercover Girl

Bent copper, Regis Toomey learns the hard way that it's too late to say that he's awfully sorry and that striking up a deal with a drugs cartel was a serious error of judgement on his part, but, as a gesture of good will he is prepared to return the money. His screen moments come to an abrupt halt with a bodged attempt at a face saving arrest.

The gang will ultimately discover that statuesque, resolute Alexis Smith (Toomey's daughter) is made of sterner stuff, as she goes undercover, with more than a little personal interest at stake.

Taking a seedy apartment, she steadily weaves her way in, targeting weakest link, gaunt, jittery 'Moocher' (Royal Dano). Further probing brings her into contact with crooked quack (Edmon Ryan), smarmy hot-shot (Gerald Mohr) and a hatchet man in a neck brace, who from the front resembles someone who had a horrific bike crash and the handlebars wedged in his mouth!

Routine in certain respects, but notable for the fact that it is the poised and striking Smith who is taking all the risks, while the increasingly smitten Scott Brady strives, from the sidelines, to ensure that she is still around for him to be smitten by, when everything hits the fan. Finally choosing to pull her from the firing line, the movie looks to be heading for a Horlicks rather than bourbon finale, but the feisty, determined cop proves she is more than capable of making her own cocaine decisions!

Not a classic, but a stimulating watch for noir fans with stabbings, shootings, fatal falls from windows/down stairwells, broken necks.....and pipes.

Cop Regis Toomey returns the ten grand to Gerald Mohr and arrests him. In return, Mohr kills him. Some time later, police lieutenant Scott Brady wants Alexis Smith, Toomey's daughter to help him crack open a drug ring and clear the whispers about her father. She goes undercover on a path to leads to doctor Edmon Ryan.

It's a melodramatic and foolish movie, one I never found very engrossing, although Royal Dano, in his movie debut, gives a fine performance as an obvious hophead who's always looking for a score of any sort. There's nothing obviously wrong about any of it, except that everyone's motivations get in the way of any sort of accomplishment, from Ryan's lust for Miss Smith, to Miss Smith's quest for vengeance against whoever it was that killed her father, to Brady's lust for Miss Smith. It makes one admire Mohr, who at least knows what he's in the dirty business for. Neither is the dialogue ever particularly surprising. Cinematographer Carl Guthrie gets in some nice compositions, but they're not enough to lift this out of the ordinary.

Undercover Girl is the second noir movie directed by Joseph Pevney after the interesting Shakedown. A policeman is killed and his policewoman daughter (Alexis Smith) searches for the killer and his drug organisation, she meets all kind of weird and deranged people, the best being Royal Dano really creepy as a desperate wolf looking for a nasty thing to do, crawling along walls with his tie with a naked girl (he makes me think of Jack Elam we see in another script writer Harry Essex noir title, Kansas City Confidential). The all cast is great, giving an anguishing atmosphere to this too rare movie.

This was only the second film directed by Joseph Pevney, and although it was made on the same old B picture shoe string which made the rounds of the footwear of every B producer, it is good sturdy stuff. Alexis Smith does an excellent job of portraying the lead character, revealing several different sides to the character with equal conviction. She can be soft, she can be tough, she can be nondescript, she can be glamorous. So she is very chameleon-like, and it works. Her two love interests are Scott Brady and Richard Egan, both convincing. The film is strengthened by the brief but reassuring presence of Connie Gilchrist as Sadie, who may have a small part but she adds fibre to the diet. Gerald Mohr is there, a smoothie psycho gangster, just the sort of guy we don't want to meet. And this film marked the film debut of the extraordinary character actor Royal Dano. He plays a loser 'groupie' to some gangsters, and of course after playing with fire gets seriously burned. We really worry about him as he whines his way from crisis to crisis. He has that lean, tormented look of a starving hound dog, and wears a wonderful garish tie with a naked girl on it, which he hopes makes him look tough. Edmon Ryan is interesting as a crooked doctor wracked with remorse, oscillating between killing people and wanting to be a good dad and renew his Hippocratic oath. The film is surprisingly robust, and it holds one's attention well. Will the undercover girl get the guys who killed her pa? Or will they get her first? This is a surprisingly early film about drug-dealers. Any undercover cop seeing it must get the shivers when he hears the line, delivered ominously: 'Nobody in Chicago knows you.' Watch out! Your alibi is unravelling! Yes, it has its nervous moments. Undercover work is best watched on the screen, far preferable to undertaking it in real life, dontchathink?

Alexis Smith and Scott Brady star in "Undercover Girl" from 1950.

After her police detective father (Regis Toomey) is murdered by people in the drug business, Chris Miller (Smith), a cop herself, infiltrates the gang on the recommendation of another female officer (Connie Gilchrist).

Chris turns out to be made for undercover, a quick thinker and quite an actress, able to be tough and sexy. She manages to convince them all.

Director Joseph Penney keeps the suspense going and the audience wondering if Chris will be found out.

Routine but a nice part for Gladys George, and an early one for Richard Egan as Chris' boyfriend. And Smith is a knockout.