This is a gritty and harsh film noir that is relentless in it's portrayal of cold blooded killing.
A teenager sees his father killed by four men and slowly plots their deaths and his revenge. Tolly Devlin (Cliff Robertson) is sent to reform school for theft and then to prison where he accidentally finds that one of the men he saw kill his father is incarcerated and in the prison hospital.
Devlin gets a job in the prison hospital and gets the info on the other three men from the dying man. When he is released from prison he again starts plotting.
Devlin saves a young woman nicknamed "Cuddles" (Dolores Dorn) from being killed by a gangster named Gus Cottahee (Richard Rust) who works for a syndicate boss called Gela (Paul Dubov). After making friends with Gela, Devlin gets a job as a money collector and slowly gathers more information despite the pleadings of Cuddles to stop before he gets killed.
Devlin decides to help the city crime committee headed by John Driscoll (Larry Gates) and this sets things in even faster motion. One of the syndicate heads named Gunther (Gerald Milton) is framed by Driscoll and Devlin and therefore killed by Gus on orders from the top crime head, Earl Conners (Robert Emhardt).
Over time Devlin has Gela killed by Gus and then sets out to get rid of Conners. As I said earlier, this is a brutal film. We see gangsters like Gunther set on fire and killed, Gus running over a child on a bike and killing her and much more. The climactic fight between Conners and Devlin is extremely brutal.
This tends to remind me of the dark film noir of the 1940's but this is 1961 and it's even darker than most. The ending is depressing, but that is natural in the world of film noir, and in Fuller's world anyway.
This movie is ESSENTIAL viewing and it was good to see it again after many years. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
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