Scott Brady, younger brother of tough guy legend Lawrence Tierney, is thrust into a wrong man noir before he even realizes where his feet are planted for director William Castle's UNDERTOW...
After talking about purchasing a rural lodge, he meets lovely good-girl Peggy Dow at a casino and then an airplane on the way to that very town where he'll be a new business-oriented citizen: only the cops know he's an ex-con with a grudge against a casino-owner named Big Jim... who we never actually meet and who he's eventually blamed for killing... as Scott becomes desperate enough to break into lead cop Bruce Bennett's home, pull out a gun and beg for help...
And while there's a fair amount of tension and rugged atmosphere, a brisk pace and a nicely-shot, gray-walled aesthetic, UNDERTOW mostly makes like our leading hero, traipsing rather blindly from one location to another, where neither he or the audience is quite sure what the next clue will get him, or why...
Just a little over an hour, director Castle seems to be doing an imitation of the kind of gritty noirs where Brady played second fiddle, like HE WALKED BY NIGHT, but the chemistry between he and Peggy Dow (while fiance Dorothy Hart and best friend John Russell are predictably guilty from the get-go) make it a neat, perfectly-paired time-filler.
After talking about purchasing a rural lodge, he meets lovely good-girl Peggy Dow at a casino and then an airplane on the way to that very town where he'll be a new business-oriented citizen: only the cops know he's an ex-con with a grudge against a casino-owner named Big Jim... who we never actually meet and who he's eventually blamed for killing... as Scott becomes desperate enough to break into lead cop Bruce Bennett's home, pull out a gun and beg for help...
And while there's a fair amount of tension and rugged atmosphere, a brisk pace and a nicely-shot, gray-walled aesthetic, UNDERTOW mostly makes like our leading hero, traipsing rather blindly from one location to another, where neither he or the audience is quite sure what the next clue will get him, or why...
Just a little over an hour, director Castle seems to be doing an imitation of the kind of gritty noirs where Brady played second fiddle, like HE WALKED BY NIGHT, but the chemistry between he and Peggy Dow (while fiance Dorothy Hart and best friend John Russell are predictably guilty from the get-go) make it a neat, perfectly-paired time-filler.