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Walter Winchell's narration lays bare the situation: "Chicago, 1929. By law, the country was dry. Through connivance with Al Capone, the city was wet." Phil Karlson films the rise of the Untouchables in swift strokes reminiscent of the gathering of the hoods in Kansas City Confidential, and there's the dilemma—order is only achieved when the law outdoes the underworld's brutality, and then is it order? Elliot Ness (Robert Stack) is the Prohibition crusader, chief amid his incorruptible agents is the ex-con turned vigilante and, eventually, martyr (Keenan Wynn). Al Capone (Neville Brand) is a hooch Mussolini, with cigar rammed between his teeth he presides over tablefuls of wide-angle cohorts out of Chester Gould. Graft, intimidation, rubouts. "You cops get more dough out of this than we do!" "Then become a cop." The two-part pilot for the series is a Westinghouse-Desilu production, its acerbic ferocity pushes TV production to its breaking point, cf. Siegel's The Killers. Ness takes a mighty hatched to Capone's brewery tank, a high-angled shot ponders the mix of contorted corpses and white foam. Wolfe Barzell and Sig Ruman are the immigrant casualties of gangland warfare, il capo di tutti capi sends his most leathery henchmen to pay a visit to his nemesis' bride (Pat Crowley) and celebrates an assassination with a night out with a couple of flappers. Karlson's violence startles, so does his seedy pathos: The camera curves along with a speeding car as a slaughtered stoolie (Joe Mantell) is dropped on the curb (it tilts up to a screaming pedestrian), his half-dressed wife (Barbara Nichols) is next seen weeping before a burlesque mirror. De Palma picks it all up, though not before Corman gives it a go (The St. Valentine's Day Massacre). With Bill Williams, Bruce Gordon, Peter Leeds, Eddie Firestone, Robert Osterloh, Paul Dubov, James Westerfield, and Frank de Kova.
--- Fernando F. Croce |