Down Three Dark Streets Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Down Three Dark Streets Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 22, 2018

Ruth Roman is one of those actresses with a ton of film and television credits who nonetheless never seemed to quite make it to the pinnacle of superstardom that others with similarly hefty “ographies” achieved. Roman had a long if not particularly illustrious career, one that is perhaps best remembered now for her turn in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. Now niche label ClassicFlix is bringing out two Ruth Roman vehicles from the 1950s, both with a number in their title (the other one is Five Steps to Danger), and both at least arguably able to be shoehorned into the noir genre, if kind of fitfully at times. My personal estimation is that you’d be hard pressed to really call either of these films outright “classics” (as in ClassicFlix), but they each have interesting elements, including some fun uses of location work.

Putative stars Broderick Crawford and Ruth Roman almost seem like afterthoughts, or perhaps tangents, as Down Three Dark Streets gets underway (in a kind of funny irony, ClassicFlix’s cover offers “3” instead of the title card’s “Three”, while the cover release of the other Ruth Roman offering lists “Five” instead of that film’s title card of “5”). With stentorian narration from William Woodson, Down Three Dark Streets purports to give the same kind of fact based approach about how the Federal Bureau of Investigation goes about its business as another relatively recent ClassicFlix release, T-Men, supposedly did about Treasury agents. It’s fascinating to watch this 1954 outing in the wake of contemporary news reports which have often tended to paint the FBI in less than flattering ways, since this is an almost jingoistic “rah rah” screed like affair depicting honorable, trustworthy and (mostly) competent investigators bringing a slew of folks to justice.

Initially it seems like agent Zack Stewart (Kenneth Tobey) is going to be the focal quasi-cop solving cases, and the first part of the film is given over to brief overviews of the “three dark streets” (i.e., cases) Stewart is investigating. Two of them, one involving a kid named Angelino (Gene Reynolds) accused of stealing a car (that’s FBI material?) and another involving a ruthless killer named Joe Walpo (Joe Bassett), are already underway. But as the no nonsense narration points out, dutiful operators point a call to Stewart from panicked mother Kate Martell (Ruth Roman), a recent widow who has received a mysterious phone call telling her to hand over the insurance payment from her husband’s death or else her daughter will be killed. (In just one of several kind of amusing elements to this film, Kate, in the throes of shock from having received this call, opens up her phone book — remember those? — right to a huge display ad for the FBI, which I’m sure was standard practice for the Bureau back in the day. Not.)

When Zack is away actually investigating something, a phone call to him from a woman named Brenda Ralles (Suzanne Alexander) is routed to Zack’s superior John Ripley (Broderick Crawford). Ralles indicates that she has important information about one of Zack’s cases and wants to meet with him at eleven that evening. (In another almost comedic aside, Ripley indicates that’s a bit late to be having an official get together). The upshot is that Ripley and Stewart travel to Ralles’ home in the dead of night, only to find Ralles unwilling to talk due to someone else hightailing it out of her abode. Stewart goes to the side of the house to see who it is, and let’s just say that another upshot (so to speak) is that Ripley is now in charge of things.

With a dead agent on his hands and a witness unwilling to talk about anything (Ralles is basically a basket case), Ripley sets out to figure out which of the three cases Zack was working on has led to his murder. That leads him to Connie Anderson (Martha Hyer), the girlfriend of Walpo, who seems to be something of a floozy and who has what is arguably the funniest line in this often overheated film (I won’t spoil it here, other than to say listen for an allusion to a watch, and then sit back and prepare to have a good, long laugh). Ripley also meets Julie (Marisa Pavan), the wife of supposed car thief Angelino, who most audience members will know instantly is off the suspects list because she’s kind, gracious and — most meaningfully, at least in the lurid world of mid-fifties thrillers — blind. Meanwhile, Ripley supervises a coterie of agents helping Kate figure out who wants to blackmail her, which evidently is felt to be an important enough case that a whole crew of guys surveils her home, including filming everyone who comes in and out of the place. (Like I said, there’s absolutely no ambiguity about how the FBI is depicted in this film, other than one brief moment where an agent loses track of Ralles.)

A number of interstitial events occur, including at least one major red herring involving a vicious thug played by Claude Akins, but it will probably come as no surprise as to which case actually ends up being linked to the murder of Zack (and another killing which occurs somewhat later in the story). It’s all kind of smarmy and almost fetid feeling at times, but the film has a certain briskness that helps it to elide some of its sillier elements. It also, like Five Steps to Danger, features a lot of enjoyable location photography, including a showdown underneath the venerable Hollywood sign which may not exactly rise (no to pun too horribly) to the Mt. Rushmore heights of North by Northwest, but which is kind of goofily enjoyable on its own overamped terms.

Down Three Dark Streets Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Down Three Dark Streets is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of ClassicFlix with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.75:1. While this release isn't being touted as having been sourced off the original camera negative in the same way that Five Steps to Danger is advertised as being, and while I'm giving this the same score as Five Steps to Danger, I have to say to my eyes this is a somewhat more consistent looking presentation than the other Roman film, with what to my eyes is a more homogeneous accounting of contrast and brightness levels. The entire presentation has a nicely organic quality, with a well resolved grain field, with expected spikes in the many optical dissolves. Black levels are nicely deep and detail levels remain high throughout, even in some relatively shrouded sequences. There are some relatively minor fluctuations in clarity, especially with regard to some of the location shots. If I could bump my score up incrementally, I'd give this release a 4.25.

Down Three Dark Streets Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Down Three Dark Streets features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track which exhibits none of the admittedly slight distortion I detected in some of the music cues utilized in Five Steps to Danger. This dialogue heavy film doesn't present a whale of a lot of challenges in the sound design department, but all elements, including the expected gunshots, are rendered with fine fidelity and no overt damage.

Down Three Dark Streets Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements offered on this Blu-ray disc.

Down Three Dark Streets Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

One of the fun things that I discovered when my family moved to the "big city" of Seattle when I was a kid was a little thing called UHF stations, those higher frequency indie channels on old broadcast television that served in a way the same function as niche cable channels do nowadays. I can't recall exactly which of the UHF frequencies available in Seattle in those days featured a bunch of old reruns of shows I had frankly never even heard of, but it was due to my discovery of the "double digit" channels on tv that I stumbled on the old Broderick Crawford series Highway Patrol, and in fact Down Three Dark Streets kind of plays like a "very special episode" of that lo-fi outing, down to and including Crawford's stolid take on a by the numbers lawman. A lot of the rest of this film can be unintentionally funny at times, and the denouement is just flat out ridiculous, but there are some enjoyable performances along the way from a bunch of reliable character performers. ClassicFlix is offering another disc with solid technical merits for those considering a purchase.