International police

Victor Mature stars in Pickup Alley as a drug enforcement officer who has his professional and personal life combined in this film. His sister Dorothy Alison is strangled by Trevor Howard who is a big drug syndicate kingpin that everyone knows about, but who has successfully kept a very low profile. All kinds of police agencies are looking for Howard and now Mature has a personal reason to get him.

Thinking she killed Howard's partner his moll Anita Ekberg is also on the run. She might be the one to lead Mature to Howard so he tails her across several international cities back to New York where the climax takes place.

This idea had already been tried and far more successfully in the Dick Powell noir classic To The Ends Of The Earth where Powell was the drug enforcement agent with no personal axe to grind who follows a drug shipment. We get to see several glimpses of major cities in Europe and of course New York. Nothing that really registers a decent impression.

Pickup Alley was an OK second feature, but will never be a classic. Fans of Mature, Ekberg, and Howard will be satisfied. Best in the film in a small role is Bonar Colleano, exiled American gangster who lives by his wits both as souvenir salesman in Rome and peddler of information to those with a price.

This has got quite a field of recognisable talent, but the story is a bit thin. "Frank McNally" (Trevor Howard) is a ruthless drug dealer who makes a bit of a mockery of the efforts of Interpol to track him down. It's only when he kills the sister of US agent "Sturgis" (Victor Mature) that he finds a foe worthy of him. This fellow is much more determined, and quickly alights on the mule of the operation "Gina" (Anita Ekberg) trailing her all around Europe before finally honing in on his prey as "McNally" plots an huge job in New York. The format of the storyline takes a bit of a travelogue style and though that does give it some pace, it means we spend way too much time on planes, at airports and touring the sites rather than developing any characters of even a substantial plot. Neither Mature nor Howard really engage, Ekberg has practically no dialogue until the very end and the best effort comes from grifter Bonar Colleano's ("Amalio") who seems way more adept at tracking "McNally" than his policeman buddy. The ending is weak - it's more of a testament to the effectiveness of global policing and communications that it is to a thriller, and I felt the whole thing just lacked oomph.

Found in Noir Archive vol 3, this is a watchable English noir that has some perfunctory acting from Mature and Ekberg, along with enjoyable scene chewing from Howard--what a long way from The Third Man and Brief Encounter!--and a terrific cameo from Bonar Colleano, whom I don't recall seeing before.

You won't care about the plot--something to do with international heroin smuggling, a murky subject dealt with carelessly by John Gilling. The interest lies in the locales, which are beautifully shot by Ted Moore, who besides making a half dozen Bond films also won an Oscar for A Man For All Seasons. The catacombs scene might have come from an Orson Welles film, Othello say, it's that evocative.

A law-and-order thriller focusing on the international narcotics trade, Interpol (aka Pickup Alley) harks back to such dire warnings as Port of New York and To The Ends of the Earth. It looks forward, too. Courtesy of co-producer Albert (Cubby) Broccoli, who five years hence would issue the first film in the deathless 007 franchise, Dr. No, this British-made movie serves as a brief, black-and-white preview of the trans-global intrigues James Bond would soon be set to smashing.

The surly secret agent here is drug-enforcement officer Victor Mature, and his motives are not merely professional: Not only is his `kid sister' hopelessly hooked to the needle, but in the pre-credits opening scene, a female colleague ends up strangled with her own scarf by heroin kingpin Trevor Howard, an arch and urbane adversary who flourishes a cigarette holder, like Charles Grey's Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever. In pursuit, Mature jets from New York to London and thence to Lisbon, Rome, Athens, Naples and back to the States.

There's even an exotic Bondgirl (Anita Ekberg), shanghaied into working against her former boss, and an amusing local helpmate (Bonar Colleano) as an expatriate Yank peddling junk and souvenirs to tourists in the Eternal City. He first pops up before an excursion into the Catacombs, where death proves to be not always ancient. Similar set-pieces – chases across rooftops and up and down steep streets – enliven other ports of call.

But, like many of the Bond movies, Interpol comes at you in sections. We cool down from one diversion in anticipation of the next. But there's not much thought given to a determining plot-line or sustaining mood. And the major characters aren't given much in the way of, well, character; to make matters worse, they're barely allowed to interact. Most of what Interpol has to offer was already done earlier in the noir cycle (occasionally by Mature and even Howard), or would be done better in the splashier spectacles of the 1960s. And let's face it: Apart from her frolic in the fountain in La Dolce Vita, Ekberg would never amount to much of a fixture in film history.

In the 1950s, American actors were in demand in European films. It seems that it was far cheaper to make movies there and by bringing in one or two big-name or semi-big name American actors the movie would have greater international appeal. So the likes of Richard Basehart, Anthony Quinn and many other mostly B-list actors made there way to Europe, though a few, such as Alan Ladd, were big name stars. Almost as big as Ladd at that time was Victor Mature and here he stars as, what else, an American in Europe!

The film finds American Cop, Charles Sturgis (Mature) in Europe to try to break up an international drug smuggling outfit. His part in the film was at best mildly interesting...as mostly he played the stereotypical angry, blustering American. What WAS interesting was the leader of the baddies. While you don't think of Trevor Howard in such a role, he was vicious and very exciting to watch...and sadly he was barely in the film! As a result of this and a mediocre script, the film has 'time-passer' written all over it and nothing more.