Walk a Crooked Mile

Dennis O'Keefe, (Daniel O'Hara) plays the role as a FBI Agent who is in charge of finding out how a Southern California atomic plant is having leaks of top secret plans and why one of their agents is killed trying to find out this important information. Scotty Grayson, (Louis Hayward) is a Scotland Yard Inspector who is also called into the FBI office and is working with Daniel O'Hara because he has some important information that can help to solve this case. Raymond Burr, (Krebs) plays the role as a communist who is a very dangerous man who will stop anyone trying to upset their plan to obtain this secret information. This picture is dealing with the Cold War period in history and the scientists in the atomic plant are all under investigation. This film is very entertaining and Dennis O'Keefe gave a great performance along with Raymond Burr just starting out his career and giving a great supporting role. Enjoy.

Well-made political thriller. 1948 is the year Hollywood joined the anti-communist crusade, and there's no mistaking the bad guys-- Raymond Burr in a Lenin-like goatee, a sinister gathering of "comrades", and Hollywood's version of commie rhetoric about how the individual doesn't matter in the global scheme of things. Up to that point, the studios had been turning out generally pro-Soviet films in behalf of our WWII allies. But now, turning on a dime, we find out what perfidious characters we had been supporting. Oh well, as they say, in politics there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.

Square-jawed Dennis O'Keefe makes for a dogged and intrepid FBI agent aided by Scotland Yard loan-out Louis Hayward. Together, they show what sterling fellows the English-speaking world turns out. They're on the trail of a covert Soviet spy sneaking out secrets from what is likely a bomb designing laboratory, though it's never specified. The plot rather prophetically anticipates the Klaus Fuchs affair of 1949, when the German-born spy was exposed as smuggling A-bomb secrets to the Soviets as early as 1945.

The suspense revolves around who the lab spy is and how he's getting the secrets out. It makes for entertaining, if workman-like, viewing. The familiar narrator Reed Hadley lends stentorian authority, along with some fine location photography. Together they impart a sense of reality to what are otherwise standard stereotypes and a melodramatic plot. Sure it's Hollywood's manipulative brand of political cinema, this time turned on our former friends. But at least it's watchable, minus the kind of cold-war hysteria that came to characterize other efforts of the period. All in all, an interesting and revealing reflection of its time.

Interesting docunoir about atomic/nuclear formulas being syphoned out of the Lakeview facility in the USA and finding their way into the iron curtain via the UK.

This is a very early example of FBI-Scotland Yard cooperation, showing the sophistication that already existed immediately after WWII, in spite of much more rudimentary spying technology than we have today. Amazing how sound was recorded on LPs, and 16 or 8mm cameras were used at stakeouts.

With Reed Haley as the narrator, the viewer gets the low-down on an intricate international operation to detect why fomulas are spirited out of the USA in art form -- paintings which, as agent O'Hara (O'Keefe) memorably points out, only suffer from having "too much red" in them.

As ever, O'Keefe is very convincing as an FBI agent, Hayward likewise as his Scotland Yard counterpart, and you can see that it is not the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but one that is already firmly in place.

Massey would have deserved a better part, and I found Onslow Stevens and Charles Evans very effective and chilling top villains. Allbritton is a beautiful woman, pity we see so little of her

Photography and action sequences top notch. Recommended.

Walk a Crooked Mile was filmed almost entirely on location. FBI agent Dan O'Hara (Dennis O'Keefe) and Scotland Yard operative Philip Grayson (Louis Hayward) team up to investigate a security leak at a Southern California atomic plant. The investigation takes place in San Francisco, where a communist spy ring flourishes. Actors as Raymond Burr and Philip Van Zandt play the communist agents.

The documentary technique gives a factual gloss to the melodramatic format. Action moves back and forth between San Francisco and the atomic plant in southern California. Gordon Douglas' knowledgeable directing keeps the film moving forward. He manages to build suspense through misdirection. The method used to take information out of the atomic plant is well protected thus keeping you guessing.

The movie is typical 40s and early 50s film noir.

WALK A CROOKED MILE is the sort of brisk, documentary style espionage yarn so often made during the '40s, using narration to tell the story of two espionage agents (DENNIS O'KEEFE and LOUIS HAYWARD) assigned to track down whomever is responsible for leaking top secret information developed at a nuclear plant in California.

Most of the action takes place in San Francisco, where O'Keefe and Hayward discover that an artist (ONSLOW STEVENS) is putting coded information beneath his paintings when he receives it from a spy working for the government agency. The story traces how the spy ring operates and it is these details that give the film added interest before the spies are caught. All of the methods must seem dated by today's standards of F.B.I. work, but the manner of presentation is gripping and the clever cat-and-mouse game that is played between the agents and the spies is credible and fascinating.

It's smoothly directed by Gordon Douglas at a fast clip. RAYMOND BURR has his usual "bad guy" role as one of he spies, and LOUISE ALLBRITTON, CARL ESMOND, ART BAKER and CHARLES EVANS all make interesting suspects in the mystery behind the identity of the key traitor.

Well worth viewing.