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Stunt man Richard Talmadge starred in this ultra-low-budget film that's short on plot, shorter on logic, but packed with action filmed on the streets of Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles. Let's see, there's something about a guy who's passing through town on a train, who's mistaken for a local man who looks just like him. The local guy is supposed to sell some hot jewels, or something, I don't know, it doesn't make much sense. In fact, Talmadge's flicks were supposedly very popular in Stalin's USSR because the stories were so simple and childlike. But the action scenes are great, beginning with a foot chase and a free-for-all fight all around one of L.A.'s downtown train stations (the Santa Fe, I think). Most other shots were done in the Hollywood hills, particularly all around the Beachwood village, including a shop at 2961 Beachwood and the nearby Beachwood Market. With all the car chases and rolling down hillsides and fisticuffs--filmed on the streets and not on some phony back lot--who cares about plot anyway? The film is available in a not-too-bad print from Alpha Video.

That's what I kept repeating: "It's only a movie." How else do you think I got through this movie with my sanity intact? It's bad on so many levels I wouldn't know where to begin. The real humor is imagining how anybody involved with making "The Fat Spy" thought it would be watchable. In fact, if there had been a documentary filmmaker hanging around the producers from the very beginning, I'll bet THAT would have been a world-class comedy. I see a bunch of fat old guys with cigars, sitting around talking about how "the kids'll love it, it's the bee's knees." In the end, nobody wanted to claim this movie. That's why it's available on cheap DVDs. Nobody renewed the copyright. I'll bet the names of the director and writer are pseudonyms. Even the best thing in the movie, beach babe Lauree Berger ("Nannette"), who's now a psychologist and the wife of a famous film and TV producer, has renounced this turkey by simply ignoring its existence.

I've only seen a couple of Sylvia Sidney's early films, but they all seem to feature at least one closeup of her face that reveals what's really going on in the picture. In Hitchcock's "Sabotage," there's a fascinating shot of her working at a theater box office when a guy she likes suddenly shows up unannounced. Hitchcock went in tight on her face as it slowly changes from a blank expression to a glow of sheer joy. I've never seen anything like it in any other film. And here, in "City Streets," the director dollies in and lingers on her face for a full minute while Hollywood cinema's first "voiceover" tells us what's going on in her thoughts. But really, the words are superfluous, because her brown, luminous eyes tell us everything. Sidney was perhaps too exotic and unconventional to compete for major stardom with the Clara Bow flappers and Jean Harlow blonds of her time. She was also difficult to get along with, according to some sources. But she is more timeless than most. Dashiell Hammett, who wrote "City Streets," said she was the best part of the movie. For me, she's the best part of any movie she's in.