Tockinit not horrible nor great

Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

SpecialsTarget Disturbing yet enthralling

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

clanciai This is one of the best espionage films ever made, for being so perfectly clever, realistic and actual in its day for the crisis of atomic secrets being smuggled to the Soviet Union, which really set the cold war off. Advanced nuclear technology is being smuggled out out from an extremely well guarded and sealed up atomic research centre, and it's impossible to understand how this is done. Five top scientists are the only ones privy to what is going on, and one of them is a traitor. Two of them are lovers, as one of them is a very beautiful woman. Raymond Burr is the very subtle villain here, he appears from the start and leads the way to the crisis and the ultimate meltdown, but the development to that climax is very careful and slow. As Dennis O'Keefe as the leading FBI investigator can't make head or tails of it on his own, a Scotland Yard agent is imported (Louis Hayward, always dashing,) and with his help they gradually approach the mystery. He even takes a job as a laundry worker to help things out, which nonetheless leads to serious trouble.It's a subtle thriller, and the final solution to the mystery couldn't have been more cleverly contrived, while the developed crisis on the way is no easy ordeal.

Robert J. Maxwell "The House on 92nd Street" -- a paean to the FBI's anti-Nazi effort during the war -- begat a host of similarly structured films. There is some kind of MacGuffin, often involving microfilm, winding up "in the wrong hands" and being smuggled out of the country. There is the FBI at the center of the story, successfully unraveling the mystery. The FBI uses awesomely modern technology, such as spy cameras, one-way mirrors, hidden microphones, and files containing thousands of fingerprints. The FBI are business-like but they're good Joes too, wisecracking with one another without ever forgetting their mission. The enemy are cold-blooded, gruff, don't say hello to one another, never smile except wryly, sacrifice one of their own at the drop of a solecism, and are clever in the way that sewer rats are clever. Narration invariably by the stentorian baritone of Reed Hadley.Reed Hadley narrates this one too, coming several years after "The House on 92nd Street." At Lakeview Laboratory, somebody seems to be smuggling out confidential formulae about rockets, trajectories, nuclear physics, the secret ingredients of Coca-Cola, and such to a spy -- Russians, this time around, not Nazis -- who then PAINTS THEM into a landscape of San Francisco and ships them to another spy in London. And so on and so forth.Dennis O'Keefe is the agent in charge of the investigation. Louis Hayward is the Scotland Yard detective who uncovers the plot and comes to the states to work with the FBI. They both had leads in minor pictures but they were steady and reliable actors. Onslow Stevens plays a character whose name is Igor Braun. I leave it to you to guess whether this is one of the good guys or the bad guys. That's -- Igor -- Braun. Raymond Burr is a plump, bearded heavy. He doesn't make any jokes but neither do any of the other rats. He's satisfactorily sadistic. Tamara Shayne, as an innocent landlady, gives the best performance in the film. Art Baker, as head of the laboratory, has a voice made for radio.It's all terribly dated and formulaic but I kind of enjoyed it. Gordon Douglas keeps things moving along, nobody torpedoes the movie, the acting is okay, and the mystery is rather interesting, if implausible.Nice, minor job.

Neil Doyle WALK A CROOKED MILE is the sort of brisk, documentary style espionage yarn so often made during the '40s, using narration to tell the story of two espionage agents (DENNIS O'KEEFE and LOUIS HAYWARD) assigned to track down whomever is responsible for leaking top secret information developed at a nuclear plant in California.Most of the action takes place in San Francisco, where O'Keefe and Hayward discover that an artist (ONSLOW STEVENS) is putting coded information beneath his paintings when he receives it from a spy working for the government agency. The story traces how the spy ring operates and it is these details that give the film added interest before the spies are caught. All of the methods must seem dated by today's standards of F.B.I. work, but the manner of presentation is gripping and the clever cat-and-mouse game that is played between the agents and the spies is credible and fascinating.It's smoothly directed by Gordon Douglas at a fast clip. RAYMOND BURR has his usual "bad guy" role as one of he spies, and LOUISE ALLBRITTON, CARL ESMOND, ART BAKER and CHARLES EVANS all make interesting suspects in the mystery behind the identity of the key traitor.Well worth viewing.

gene-86 Walk a Crooked Mile was filmed almost entirely on location. FBI agent Dan O'Hara (Dennis O'Keefe) and Scotland Yard operative Philip Grayson (Louis Hayward) team up to investigate a security leak at a Southern California atomic plant. The investigation takes place in San Francisco, where a communist spy ring flourishes. Actors as Raymond Burr and Philip Van Zandt play the communist agents. The documentary technique gives a factual gloss to the melodramatic format. Action moves back and forth between San Francisco and the atomic plant in southern California. Gordon Douglas' knowledgeable directing keeps the film moving forward. He manages to build suspense through misdirection. The method used to take information out of the atomic plant is well protected thus keeping you guessing. The movie is typical 40s and early 50s film noir.