User reviews

This was only the second film directed by Joseph Pevney, and although it was made on the same old B picture shoe string which made the rounds of the footwear of every B producer, it is good sturdy stuff. Alexis Smith does an excellent job of portraying the lead character, revealing several different sides to the character with equal conviction. She can be soft, she can be tough, she can be nondescript, she can be glamorous. So she is very chameleon-like, and it works. Her two love interests are Scott Brady and Richard Egan, both convincing. The film is strengthened by the brief but reassuring presence of Connie Gilchrist as Sadie, who may have a small part but she adds fibre to the diet. Gerald Mohr is there, a smoothie psycho gangster, just the sort of guy we don't want to meet. And this film marked the film debut of the extraordinary character actor Royal Dano. He plays a loser 'groupie' to some gangsters, and of course after playing with fire gets seriously burned. We really worry about him as he whines his way from crisis to crisis. He has that lean, tormented look of a starving hound dog, and wears a wonderful garish tie with a naked girl on it, which he hopes makes him look tough. Edmon Ryan is interesting as a crooked doctor wracked with remorse, oscillating between killing people and wanting to be a good dad and renew his Hippocratic oath. The film is surprisingly robust, and it holds one's attention well. Will the undercover girl get the guys who killed her pa? Or will they get her first? This is a surprisingly early film about drug-dealers. Any undercover cop seeing it must get the shivers when he hears the line, delivered ominously: 'Nobody in Chicago knows you.' Watch out! Your alibi is unravelling! Yes, it has its nervous moments. Undercover work is best watched on the screen, far preferable to undertaking it in real life, dontchathink?

Undercover Girl is the second noir movie directed by Joseph Pevney after the interesting Shakedown. A policeman is killed and his policewoman daughter (Alexis Smith) searches for the killer and his drug organisation, she meets all kind of weird and deranged people, the best being Royal Dano really creepy as a desperate wolf looking for a nasty thing to do, crawling along walls with his tie with a naked girl (he makes me think of Jack Elam we see in another script writer Harry Essex noir title, Kansas City Confidential). The all cast is great, giving an anguishing atmosphere to this too rare movie.

Rookie policewoman Alexis Smith (Chris/Sally) goes undercover to help Police Lieutenant Scott Brady (Trent) smash a drugs gang and exact revenge on the man who killed her father.

The story is ok but the picture quality isn't too good. It's also unbelievable nonsense. Smith is badly cast - she doesn't have the looks to physically attract so many people and she is too square-looking to convince as a top gangster woman. It also makes no sense why seasoned bad girl Gladys George (Liz) would open up to her and tell her all that she does. There is also no way that Smith would be sent in to carry out that final sting. There is so much that is just a load of tosh with this film, but it keeps the audience watching.

Goodness knows why the female trainee officers have to wear shorts during target practice. Very funny. They should also wear shorts when making arrests. And when answering the telephone.

A cop has taken money from mobsters, though he now has second thoughts and decides instead to arrest these drug dealers. But they get the drop on him...killing him instead. A short time later, a cop approaches a policewoman candidate, Christine Miller (Alexis Smith) to inform her that her father was the man who had been killed and he needs help to figure out who was responsible. She agrees to leave her department to come to work with him on exposing the killers. This will mean her going under cover and pretending to be a crook looking to make a big drug deal and the hope is that as she works her way up through the gang that they'll find out who is in charge...and who killed her dad.

The best thing about this film is that it doesn't resort to the usual cliches and is a well made tale. Not exactly brilliant but still quite enjoyable and worth your time.

Alexis Smith and Scott Brady star in "Undercover Girl" from 1950.

After her police detective father (Regis Toomey) is murdered by people in the drug business, Chris Miller (Smith), a cop herself, infiltrates the gang on the recommendation of another female officer (Connie Gilchrist).

Chris turns out to be made for undercover, a quick thinker and quite an actress, able to be tough and sexy. She manages to convince them all.

Director Joseph Penney keeps the suspense going and the audience wondering if Chris will be found out.

Routine but a nice part for Gladys George, and an early one for Richard Egan as Chris' boyfriend. And Smith is a knockout.

Bent copper, Regis Toomey learns the hard way that it's too late to say that he's awfully sorry and that striking up a deal with a drugs cartel was a serious error of judgement on his part, but, as a gesture of good will he is prepared to return the money. His screen moments come to an abrupt halt with a bodged attempt at a face saving arrest.

The gang will ultimately discover that statuesque, resolute Alexis Smith (Toomey's daughter) is made of sterner stuff, as she goes undercover, with more than a little personal interest at stake.

Taking a seedy apartment, she steadily weaves her way in, targeting weakest link, gaunt, jittery 'Moocher' (Royal Dano). Further probing brings her into contact with crooked quack (Edmon Ryan), smarmy hot-shot (Gerald Mohr) and a hatchet man in a neck brace, who from the front resembles someone who had a horrific bike crash and the handlebars wedged in his mouth!

Routine in certain respects, but notable for the fact that it is the poised and striking Smith who is taking all the risks, while the increasingly smitten Scott Brady strives, from the sidelines, to ensure that she is still around for him to be smitten by, when everything hits the fan. Finally choosing to pull her from the firing line, the movie looks to be heading for a Horlicks rather than bourbon finale, but the feisty, determined cop proves she is more than capable of making her own cocaine decisions!

Not a classic, but a stimulating watch for noir fans with stabbings, shootings, fatal falls from windows/down stairwells, broken necks.....and pipes.

This intense and captivating film noir from 1950 feels groundbreaking and significant and deserving of noteworthy acclaim, which unfairly it hasn't received. While watching this remarkable film, I couldn't help but be keenly aware of how ahead of its time Undercover Girl is, not just for its content but cinematically. The story follows a female police officer named Christine Miller (played with mesmerizing brilliance by Alexis Smith in a career-best performance), who is determined to avenge the murder of her father by going undercover to take down the narcotics ring responsible for his death. In so many ways, this feels like a fantastic precursor for Police Woman, Cagney and Lacey, and even Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. Yet, the gender of our main character is not the only celebratory element: this is a damn good movie from start to finish. Giving Alexis Smith terrific on-screen support is Royal Dano in a complex role (his movie debut nonetheless) with which the very talented actor gains the audience's sympathy - something tough to do for a desperate low rent character. Director Joseph Pevney (who would continue to helm films with strong female leads including Because of You with Loretta Young and Female on the Beach with Joan Crawford) knows how to hold his audience in a permanent state of suspense, masterfully creating a level of nail-biting intensity, evident in the last riveting ten minutes of this taut thriller (you'll be on the edge of your seat cheering our tough and clever heroine on). There's much to admire about this hugely underrated cinematic gem: from breaking gender norms (a woman on the screen who has a dangerous job and isn't relegated to housework and cocktail serving to her overworked husband) to being one of the best crime films made, Undercover Girl deserves far better glory and a lot of respect.

Cop Regis Toomey returns the ten grand to Gerald Mohr and arrests him. In return, Mohr kills him. Some time later, police lieutenant Scott Brady wants Alexis Smith, Toomey's daughter to help him crack open a drug ring and clear the whispers about her father. She goes undercover on a path to leads to doctor Edmon Ryan.

It's a melodramatic and foolish movie, one I never found very engrossing, although Royal Dano, in his movie debut, gives a fine performance as an obvious hophead who's always looking for a score of any sort. There's nothing obviously wrong about any of it, except that everyone's motivations get in the way of any sort of accomplishment, from Ryan's lust for Miss Smith, to Miss Smith's quest for vengeance against whoever it was that killed her father, to Brady's lust for Miss Smith. It makes one admire Mohr, who at least knows what he's in the dirty business for. Neither is the dialogue ever particularly surprising. Cinematographer Carl Guthrie gets in some nice compositions, but they're not enough to lift this out of the ordinary.

This is a highly unpleasant and nasty noir dealing with the very bottom end of dirty business and criminal rackets, the drug business manufactured and delivered through the respectable front of a doctor, while his gang of hoodlums, gangsters, murderers and inhuman racketeers is one of the worst possible conceivable rogues gallery, one constantly growing more desperate in fear and anxiety (Royal Dano) while the scariest is the bulky thug with a broken neck. They are really monsters all of them, while stepping down to them and standing out of the film with glory is Alexis Smith, always stylish and making a magnificent appearance, here also dressed up extra in the stola and luxury wardrobe of the dame she acts to personify in order to get at the gang and especially her father's murderer. It is one of the most revolting noirs for its abhorrent story but magnificently worked out and made real in nerve-racking realism, while once again you will never forget Alexis Smith.