Undertow (dir. William Castle, 1949)
Sometimes you are reminded that film noir was only elevated by critics, and like anything has its fair share of mediocrities or outright failures. Undertow is neither, exactly, but manages to be something as bad: forgettable.
Middling mobster Tony Reagan (Scott Brady) was run out of Chicago for having an affair with the niece of a local crime boss. A chance encounter with a former associate in Reno precedes Reagan’s decision to return to Chicago to seek forgiveness and to propose marriage to his one-time lover. The boss is found murdered and all the evidence points to Reagan in a frame job, the orchestration of which seems fairly obvious. In order to prove his innocence to the police and to avoid being killed by his fellow criminals, Reagan teams up with a school teacher (Peggy Dow) he met in Reno and happened to share a plane with.
I had higher hopes for this one. That William Castle director credit was too tantalizing. What could I expect from a noir picture by the guy who gave us House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler? The answer, unlike his science fiction and horror films, is mere competence. It’s a perfectly adequate B-picture. I could not tell you a thing about Brady’s performance a couple of days after watching the movie, but I guess Dow is a likable presence.
(I am, of course, obligated to say nice things about her due to her decades long patronage of my hometown’s library system and her funding of the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t being sincere! Please don’t send your goons to break my legs…)
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