Outside the Law

Army parolee Johnny Salvo (Ray Danton) is offered a chance to "wipe his slate clean" and regain his citizenship rights if he agrees to help the Secret Service investigate the suspicious death and activities of another Army parolee while in Berlin. It's a dicey situation because he'll be under the supervision of his own father, whom he deeply resents, and the investigation leads to an international counterfeiting ring who'll stop at nothing, including murder, to protect their operation. With his life in danger, Johnny falls for the attractive widow in the case who may or may not be part of the criminal gang. Charming but sinister gang boss (Grant Williams) is determined to get Johnny out of the picture. Suspenseful and absorbing drama as the complicated operation is gradually uncovered will keep viewers engaged.

The underrated actor, Ray Danton, stars as aGI with a checkered past, who is now working for his father in the Treasury Department. The father and son team (along with several t-men) are trying to crack a very sophisticated counterfeiting ring originating in Germany. I can tell you from direct experience as an owner of a small paper collectibles business, that the Germans are the absolute best paper counterfeiters in the world, by a large margin.

They counterfeit paper collectibles very often in addition to doing counterfeit bill reproduction.

There is the usual romantic interest from a B actress, who was never seen again (or rarely), but it really has little chemistry (her acting is pretty bad). Danton, on the other hand, is very good in his role. Catch him if you can.

It's a very conventional thriller with a lot of technical intricacies about details in investigating counterfeit money, but there is a girl involved who is wholly agreeable, knowing nothing of the racket in which her husband was involved before getting murdered, while his colleague has some past sins to make up for, being on parole, and getting his chance when he is offered the possibility to make a clean slate of his records if he helps sorting out his colleague's being mixed up with advanced gangsters. It so happens that he is offered this opportunity by his father, who is a police, and the most interesting part of the film is their relationship. The father looks constantly worried and concerned about his son, who resents the whole business and wants to pull out because of some previous disagreement with his father, which we never learn anything about. He reminds very much of Dean Martin but without any humour, which this film is entirely without. It is interesting though, there is a grand finale with fisticuffs and shootouts, and Onslow Stevens as the father makes a great performance which couldn't be more convincing.

Ex-con Ray Danton is recruited by his father, Onslow Stevens, to help track down and break a gang of counterfeiters in Germany. Danton is angry with his father, but accepts. Stevens can't keep his love for his son from interfering with the operations.

It's a nice, murky little movie directed by Jack Arnold, with some love interest provided by Leigh Snowden, and a general air of "just doing my job" on the part of the other agents and the counterfeiters, even when they look like they're about to get violent. Utility cinematographer Irving Glassberg shows his usual high level of professionalism in the sort of throwaway programmer that Arnold was able to put something extra into.

"Johnny" (Ray Danton) is an ex-soldier drafted in by the US authorities in Germany to help investigate the death of one of his old army pals. Not long out of prison, he is keen to clear his name and is soon on the trail of a clever gang who are counterfeiting cash and taking advantage of the post-WWII confusion to, quite literally, make a mint. His search is further complicated by the involvement of both his father - the policeman who gives him the gig in the first place and with whom he has a strained relationship; and with the widow of the murdered man "Maria" (Leigh Snowden) who is as keen to get to the bottom of this perlous mystery and, of course, a romance starts to blossom. There's no getting away from it. Handsome as he is, Danton is as wooden as a plank. He has precisely no charisma and that really impacts on this film that, from a criminal perspective, is actually a little bit better than a routine caper. There's far too much by way of chatter and really very little action until the last ten minutes when the threads start to pull together. A bit more creative casting could have made this more memorable, but as it is - well it's worth a watch but you'll never remember it afterwards.