Western Pacific Agent

There are many excellent crime programmers buried within the output of Lippert Pictures, and here is another one. Yes, it's full of clichés (perhaps I should call them "archetypes"), but it is delivered with such sincerity and style that I was caught up in the story and cared about the interesting collection of characters. Like many Lipperts of this era, the cast is superb. Mickey Knox (who has had a long and interesting career both in Europe and in the USA) is a fantastic cold-blooded killer; Kent Taylor brings his usual touch of class to the title role; Sid Melton, a Lippert regular, is added for comic relief as a near-sighted mail-order detective school graduate (!!!), Robert Lowery (in his supporting actor period, after many excellent starring roles in the 40s) as a local railroad employee who is an early victim, and a very moving performance by Morris Carnovsky (acclaimed actor and also blacklist victim) as Knox's father, who knows what his son has become yet still loves him and believes he can change. There is a genuinely shocking moment near the end of the film between Knox and Carnovsky. The "wraparound" story seen briefly at the beginning and end of the film is outrageous and would be laughed out of any Screen writing 101 class, but these filmmakers were not interested in winning Oscars; they were delivering an entertaining and exciting piece of product for the tired working people who put down their money at the third-string neighborhood and small-town theaters that booked Lippert Pictures. If you like unpretentious action films (there are no noir elements here, although Knox's portrayal of the psycho killer will appeal to many noir fans), this one really delivers the goods. I watched it twice upon getting a copy recently and marveled at how efficiently it was constructed and how professional the end product was. There's also an interesting subplot involving the hobos who ride the trains and have camps near the train tracks--their society is depicted in a sympathetic and interesting manner. It's just one way that this film, which on one level is simply a genre crime-film product, is actually a very special piece of work that is far better made than it needed to be in order to fill its niche.

Evil bindlestiff Mickey Knox kills the station agent who is sitting on tens of thousand of dollars and takes the cash. In comes railroad agent Kent Taylor, who myopic witness Sid Melton, to track him down. The trouble is that some one can identify the murder; it's Morris Carnovsky, who's Knox's father.

It's a well directed movie by Sam Newfield, who was actually a pretty good director when given more than the $100 that PRC had been willing to spend on a movie. There are some nice setting shots of railroad bridges, a good portion is handsomely photographed in interiors of Western Pacific's observation cars. Where this movie falls apart is in the dialogue, which I blame on hack screenwriter Fred Myton, who never met a cliche he didn't steal. But allow the basic competence of the performers, who include Sheila Ryan and Dick Elliott to charm you, and it's watchable.

This is amazingly good for being a B-feature without any stars. The interesting thing is that the two leads, father and son, Morris Carnovsky and Mickey Knox, were blacklisted in the McCarthy persecution days, so they had to resort to second hand roles in second hand features, but this is a jewel in the mud. There are many memorable scenes, but most striking are the genuine insights into the life and camps of the outcasts, trams and bums living at camp fires in the forest and hiking on freight trains, there is a startling scene on such a train when one bum throws the other out, and thus the whole character of the film becomes that of genuine realism from the underworld. There can be no sympathy with Mickey Knox, while the sympathy with his father Morris Carnovsky must be infinite, and their relationship is particularly poignant in its desperate humanity. This is no trifle of a film despite its very basic B-character, but it will leave you with very much to think of.

An intriguing detective story, thanks largely to two actors, Mickey Knox and Morris Carnovsky, whose careers were threatened by their politics during the witch hunts of the late 1940s. Knox steals the film as a sociopath who heists a payroll, then discovers there's no way to pass the marked money. Carnovsky isn't far behind as his father, a small town grocer who can't bring himself to turn in his psycho son. Kent Taylor as a railroad detective and Sheila Ryan as the sister of a murder victim are nominally the stars. But it's the first-rate character acting, coupled with effective location camera-work (like a shoot-out on a rising drawbridge,)that make this a grade B thriller worth watching.

Another in the Lippert Films series, this is a typical B-movie with a no-name cast, save character actors Dick O'Neil and Sid Melton, wooden acting and directing and a simple plot/story. Still, it is an entertaining film, albeit cheesy by today's standards. The script is also sophomoric but somehow engrossing. Western Pacific Agent involves detectives who work for the railroad solving crimes and other dilemmas, in this case the murder of a railroad payroll carrier and another victim. This is included in Forgotten Noir Vol. 4, a set of B-movies that are, if nothing else, good fun to watch. They have a style reminiscent of 1950s television dramas. You won't find any 'method acting' here.