Underworld U.S.A.
With Cliff Robertson, Dolores Dorn, Beatrice Kay.
US, 1961, 35mm, black & white, 98 min.
Underworld U.S.A. is among the fiercest, starkest and most unsparing of the many studio films made about organized crime, a popular and perennial topic in Hollywood since the mid-1940s. Like Joseph H. Lewis' The Undercover Man (1949) or Phil Karlson's The Brothers Rico (1957) before it, Fuller's film turns away from the expressionist noir vision of crime long favored in Hollywood and towards a bleaker, barer and menacingly abstract portrayal of criminality. Fuller goes even further, however, by stripping his film of almost any sentimentality and by making even his protagonist deeply unsympathetic and possibly psychopathic. A revenge saga starring a remarkably sinister Cliff Robertson as a failed burglar determined to track down the killers of his criminal father, Underworld U.S.A. follows the young man's violent path up the crooked ladder of the syndicate that holds a stern grip over vice. For his unsparing depiction of brutal violence and his reduction of character to vicious and brilliantly efficient caricatures—such as Richard Rust's ruthless hit man—Fuller's hard-hitting film anticipates the blood-soaked yakuza masterpieces of Kinji Fukasaku.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Pickup on South Street
The Crimson Kimono
The Naked Kiss
Underworld U.S.A.
The Baron of Arizona
Merrill's Marauders
House of Bamboo
Fixed Bayonets!
Forty Guns
Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street
A Fuller Life
Run of the Arrow
Street of No Return
The Steel Helmet
The Big Red One
Shock Corridor
Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made
