Perry Kate Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Mischa Redfern I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

evanston_dad I watched "Down Three Dark Streets" because I wanted to add another notch to my film noir belt. But though it has some noirish qualities, it's really not much of a noir at all. Instead, it's one of those docudramas that were little more than propaganda pieces for one government agency or another, this one the FBI.Broderick Crawford lends the film some gravitas as an FBI agent who takes over three cases from his friend and colleague who's murdered in the process of investigating one of them. They may all be related or they may not be. The question of whether or not they are doesn't generate much suspense for the viewer, if it was ever meant to. Ruth Roman is the protagonist at the center of the case that gets the most screen time. Martha Hyer does some screen chewing as a gangster's floozy, while Marisa Pavan, one year away from being nominated for an Oscar (for "The Rose Tattoo") plays a blind, sympathetic wife. There's some suspenseful atmosphere and forays into the seedy underbelly of L.A., and it's these qualities that bring it closest to belonging to the noir canon. But in most respects it settles for merely competent, and as a result, it's not especially memorable.Grade: B-

MartinHafer While there isn't a lot of spectacular action or twists in this film, it is rock solid throughout--sort of like an episode of "Dragnet" or "The FBI". A very good script and nice attention to law enforcement details make this one worth watching.The film begins with two FBI agents on an assignment. One is unexpectedly murdered by someone hiding in the shadows. The surviving agent (Broderick Crawford) seems to think that someone on the other agents list of open cases has done the crime, so he looks into the three cases. And so, you see Crawford go from case to case--looking for clues and solving the cases while he's at it. It all leads to a dandy final set at the Hollywood sign.As I said above, the show is big on realism and police procedures. I also appreciated how ordinary and ugly some of the cast were--like real life. Overall, it's a lot like a tidier version of film noir--with a strong infusion of realism and good acting.By the way, if you do watch, look for the guy with his home-made 'spy detector'!

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** Pretty good FBI crime drama with Broaderick Crawford as FBI Agent John "Rip" Ripley on the trail of an on the loose killer who murdered his friend and fellow FBI Agent Zack Stewart, Kenneth Tobey.Finding out that the late Agent Stewart was involved in three separate cases it becomes evident that somehow one of the cases he was working on had to involved the man who murdered him. Agent Ripley soon comes to the conclusion that the case involving the extortion of widow Kate Martell, Ruth Roman, is the one that lead to Agent Stewart's murder and may possibly be connected in the two other cases he was involved in; A car robbery ring and the murder of a gas station attendant, William Schallert, on the Nevada Californian border!Using Mrs. Martell as bait Agent Ripley has her play along with her extortionist who want her to pay him off with the $10,000.00 of insurance money she got when her husband was killed in a fatal car accident. If Mrs. Martell doesn't comply he threatens to murder her nine year old daughter Vickie, Dede Grinor.It takes both good old fashion police work as well as the most up to date state of the art, circa 1954, police science to finally track down the both killer/extortionist. In the process of doing that Agent Riply also solves the two other cases,the car robbery ring and murder of the gas station attendant, as well. Even though they had nothing at all to do with both Agent Stewart and Brenda Rolles' (Suzanne Alexander), who knew who Stewarts killer was, murders.***SPOILER ALERT*** The films ending was a real hum dingier with the killer finally revealing himself as he appears out of the blue right under the famous Hollywood sign. It's there where he instructed Mrs. Martell to leave the extortion money. It was also there where Agent Ripley, without Mrs. Mantell knowledge, and his fellow FBI agents and the local police set a trap for him!P.S Interesting cast of unknowns who went on to bigger and better things later on in their film careers. Both Kenneth Tobey-who also stared in the sci-fi classic "The Thing" back in 1951-and Max Showalter were to make within two years, in 1955 & 1956, the classic bad sci-fi movie epics that were immortalized on TV-on shows like Mystery Science Fiction Theater 3000-in "It Came Form Beneath the Sea" and "The Indestructible Man". The murdered gas station attendant William Schallert was to later play the befuddled and out of touch, to what his zany daughter was doing, father of Patty Duke in the aptly named "Patty Duke Show". And the beefy and booming voiced Claud Akins was to finally make it all the way to top, as President of the United States, playing President Teddy Roosevelt in the 1992, two years before his untimely death of cancer, Sherlock Holmes movie "Incident at Victoria Falls".

dadier55 DOWN THREE DARK STREETS, with its trio of cases for the FBI to solve, was the template eight years later for EXPERIMENT IN TERROR, reduced down to just the extortion plot. Broderick Crawford is "Agent John Ripley" in the first, Glenn Ford is named the same character in the second. STREETS uses the semi-documentary approach (heavy-handed voice-over narration) and is more of a whodunit, while EXPERIMENT is a real suspense-filled thriller with the villain identified much earlier. But even then, it is much more chilling. Ruth Roman is the fear-filled victim in the original, Lee Remick plays the spunky lady being extorted in the semi-remake. Good Los Angeles locales, especially the "Hollywood" sign usage in the first. But great San Francisco scenes in TERROR, particularly the Candlestick Park shootout following a Giants-Dodgers game. Both are recommended, with STREETS a competent mystery and EXPERIMENT a classic at the end of the Noir cycle.