Les Filles du service secret

A Kefauver type racketeering Senate investigating committee is taking itself on the road for local hearings and that is of great concern to Governor Raymond Greenleaf. It seems as though way back in his youth and under a different name he committed a murder and if the committee uncovers any wrong doing he could be charged with its more than a stretch in Club Fed. That's because when he would be arrested and printed his prints would be on file with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Of course the state racketeering boss Raymond Burr has a lot invested in Greenleaf and he's not about to see his investment get flushed down the toilet. He hatches a scheme to get the fingerprint card out of J. Edgar Hoover's closely guarded files. It involves getting to one of the clerks in the Justice Department, Margia Dean through her brother, Don Garner. And when that doesn't work Burr tries to use another clerk Audrey Totter who is our FBI Girl.

I have to say that with that title alone I was expecting some paranoid Cold War story. So I was pleasantly surprised when FBI Girl turned out to be a nice noir thriller. It came from the Poverty Row studio of Lippert Productions, but not bad considering the source.

Caesar Romero and George Brent play the two agents on this case and Romero provides the narration for the film. The two agents are all business and the plot follows a straight line narrative to the source of their problems. Greenleaf may have been governor, but Burr is calling all the shots and his rackets have a big investment in keeping their see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil governor in office. And he's being talked about for even higher office. And as the state boss Burr outshines everyone in the cast.

Try to catch this one when broadcast and don't be put off by the title, it's better than you think.

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.

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!

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.

Among my William Berke's favourites with BETRAYAL FROM THE EAST, the most interesting crime films he ever made, with a good plot, a good cast and a good surprise because there are no real lead character here, no one and unique hero above the rest of the cast. It is not too long and it is tense all long the movie. Produced by Lippert Company, it is at the same quality scale as a RKO picture, a company for which William Berke also worked. The cops duo, some kind of a buddy scheme - Cesar Romero, George Brent - is a bit improbable but surprising in the good way. You can trust me, this film is not a masterpiece but a damn good B movie.