Inside the Mafia

This film has about as much to do with the Mafia as Chef Boyardee Spaghetti has to do with Italian food. Despite that, most of the film is fairly engaging, except for a magical flight from the house to the car by a boyfriend who must have run faster than the road runner to get to his car and start it. (You will know what I mean when you see the scene). Cameron Mitchell and a group of B actors do a decent job with the lines they are given, but the movie runs out of gas in the last fifteen minutes or so. It could have been a much better film, had it been a bit more realistic; especially at the end. There is a also a pretty hilarious statement that this event marked the end of organized crime in the US LOL. If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell you. Watchable for the first hour.

Not much Inside Information on the Infamous Crime Syndicate. Just a Superficial account of Real Life country Meeting of the Mafia in upstate NY.

Just Uninspired Underworld Uttering.

Extremely Low-Budget-Look that is as Uninteresting as it is Uninvolved. The Hats and the Sunglasses are Laughable,

Supposedly this is a Sinister look to Evoke Emotion from the Audience and Hide the lack of Emoting. Persuading it is Not, just Pretensions.

The Opening Barbershop Scene is an example of Good Work.

The Voice-Over Annunciation Announcer Drops in Unexpected at times and Demands Authoritarian Authorship because his Diction is Impeccable.

The Final Shootout is as Dull as these Things Get.

Mafia gunmen sent by their boss to kill a rival gang leader take over a small airfield where their target is scheduled to land. While waiting for the man they're going to kill, they terrorize the employees of the airfield, one of whom starts to devise a plan to turn the tables on their captors.

Appalachin or Apple Lake? Clearly the latter is inspired by the former. But that is largely where the similarities end. Heck, it seems like not even all the guys in the film are supposed to be Italian. But, I guess that is a safe move.

How much was known about the Mafia in 1959? Today (2015) we are still learning more, but in 1959 it was quite fresh, with the FBI only just beginning to look into the men involved. In a way, this film is ahead of its time, whether strictly accurate or not.

The term "ripped from the headlines" is always used when a film on the big or small screen has a plot taken from real life. In the case of Inside The Mafia the recent underworld stories of the exile of Lucky Luciano, the murder of Albert Anastasia, and the gangland convention at Appalachia are all elements in the plot of this film.

Ted DeCorsia is hit in a hotel barbershop Anastasia style, but he doesn't die right away. After the hospital stay he's moved to a secluded place and sends for his number 2 guy Cameron Mitchell. DeCorsia was trying a syndicate power play that obviously fell short. But he's not out of moves. The boss of bosses who is in exile is secretly flying in to a convention held in a secluded rural spot of Upstate New York at Edward Platt's estate. Mitchell decides to make a hit as Grant Richards arrives at the small county airport.

To do that involves taking Jean Louis Heydt the manager of the airport and his daughters Elaine Edwards and Carol Nugent hostage. Getting swept up in it is State Trooper James Brown and Nugent's boyfriend Michael Monroe. So they wait for the plane with Richards to arrive.

Film buffs will no doubt recognize the plot from Suddenly has been reworked from a presidential assassination to a gangland hit. Still Inside The Mafia is fine no frills thriller from United Artists and holds up well today.

Though a knowledge of gangland history helps one get the fine points of the story.

There is a black and white feel to this film, and a McCarthy era style of American idealism in the fight against the mob.

That is lost today thanks to movies supported by the mob to make people think mobsters are demi gods, movies like the Godfather. And anyone who denies that is either a liar or a moron. The Godfather movies, the Scarface with Pacino, the Good fellow movies, all are backed by mobsters to let people know they are a superior species.

And it worked. The mob reigns supreme due to their mental hold over the ignorant masses.

Come back to the fifties, before Hollywood completely sold out, before Hollywood was totally run by the mob, and we get an actually more credible look at mobsters.

What this film gives us that the later films don't is "credible characters in incredible situations." Like many other fifties era mob movies (Suddenly comes to mind), it revolves around innocent Americans threatened by a trio of hoodlums. And here the trio is almost as super human as modern mobster movies. One is a super tough that man handles even the tall policeman who has the drop on him.

The reactions and emotions of the characters are what make this a better film than what one gets today. The "Lucky Luciano" figure is pretty obvious, and tricks the hoodlums who think they are upwardly mobile in a very believable way. We see it coming, but we also see how the trio of hoodlums led by Cameron Mitchell (who does a remarkable job in this role, tops anything Brando, DeNiro, or Pacino did later in mob roles), we can see how they are fooled into their actions.

There are reviews of this film that make no sense, because they are either made by insiders who think they are part of the mob family and want the mythology of demi god standards to sell to the public, or they are complete morons, bubble boys who have lived in cubicles instead of on the streets on in Nature.

At the same time, this film has a fault in trying to label the events as being totally accurate. They are dramatized as far as the "end of the mob" goes, but that's about the only fault. The rest is very well told, certainly more real than the stories written by mobsters for idiots who believe mobsters.