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Dad's last gasp drives Tolly's vengeance. Original Gangsters The PFA revives Sam Fuller's noir classic Underworld, U.S.A. By James Magary If you seek revenge, the old saying goes, first dig two graves. In the case of Samuel Fuller's Underworld, U.S.A., one should dig three, four, a dozen graves. The story, based by Fuller on an exposé series in the Saturday Evening Post, begins in a dark alley and never really leaves. It opens as teenage street punk Tolly Devlin meets his vaguely defined mother figure Sandy (Beatrice Kay) behind her coffee shop. Tolly and Sandy discuss his deadbeat dad, "the world's worst old man." Tolly loves his father, admires him for schooling him in the art of the hustle. "He's learnin' you how to hustle alright É right into the electric chair," Sandy replies. Minutes later, the old man gives his final lesson as Tolly and Sandy watch him get killed by four thugs. Tolly swears revenge, and Underworld, U.S.A. lurches forward in years as a grown-up Tolly (played by a sneering Cliff Robertson) comes home from the big house where he's offed the first of his father's assassins. He uses the classic divide-and-conquer strategy of Yojimbo and the Coen brothers' Miller's Crossing: Play one side off against the other. He insinuates himself into the favor of the local mafia, an outfit posing as the charitable National Projects, where you'll here the clickety-clack of an adding machine as much as gunfire. Meanwhile, Tolly acts as a mole for District Attorney Driscoll (Larry Gates), an upright, milk-drinking crusader. But Tolly has no cause; he's only got his "revenge kick." Here, Fuller is in the mode of the tabloid primitive. A former (yellow) journalist, Fuller imbues Underworld, U.S.A. with all the sensationalist fervor of banner headlines and WeeGee crime scene photos. The syndicate's big boss -- a corpulent Allan Gruener in a performance that plays like Al Capone channeling the spirit of Truman Capote -- is a sicko CEO who speaks of the 10- to 15-year-old demographic as an untapped market for mob dope. "Don't tell me the end of a needle has a conscience," he oozes. After a hit man runs down the cutie-pie daughter of an informant, Fuller's camera freezes on the image of her thrown-off shoes and the bent bicycle she was riding. Such passages may feel corny and over-the-top today, but Fuller's excited "Threat to a Nation!" polemics easily reflected a time when the veil of secrecy around the mob was only starting to recede, when J. Edgar Hoover was only starting to admit that, yes, these gangsters are organized. Still, Fuller's direction keeps Underworld personal, engaging in the kind of pulp poetry that gives his fans a wicked glee. Tolly has only rage and bitterness to drive him. Fate sticks it to him, so he ignores Sandy's cautions and shrugs off D.A. Driscoll's quaint notions of law and order. When love enters the picture, Tolly gets even more dismissive. Cuddles (Dolores Dorn) is a low-level drug runner -- a mule with the looks of a moll -- who gets rescued by Tolly and then falls for him, hard. She begs him to quit his mission and settle down. She even speaks of marriage. Tolly smirks devilishly and snorts, "Marry you? Marry you?" Tolly -- so clever, but ultimately rather dim -- just may come around to her way of thinking. But not before he fills those graves. Underworld, U.S.A. (1961; 99 min.) Written and directed by Samuel Fuller, starring Cliff Robertson, Dolores Dorn, and Beatrice Kay, plays Tuesday, March 26th at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. [ East Bay | Metroactive | Archives ]