Tales That Defy the Ordinary

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Underworld U.S.A. (1961) – Revenge, Shadows, and the Gospel According to Samuel Fuller

There are crime films, and then there are crime sermons. Underworld U.S.A. doesn’t so much tell a story as it shouts one from the alleyway, kicks you in the ribs, and leaves you bleeding under the neon. Directed by Samuel Fuller in 1961, it’s one of the director’s most unrelenting noirs, a film obsessed with vengeance, power, and America’s love affair with organised crime.

It isn’t pretty. It isn’t subtle. But like a glass of cheap whiskey at 3am, it does exactly what it should.


Black and white gunfire scene from film noir Underworld U.S.A. (1961)
The dark, revenge-driven world of Samuel Fuller’s Underworld U.S.A. (1961)

Samuel Fuller: The Man Who Spat on Hollywood’s Carpet

Samuel Fuller wasn’t a man for polish. He was a crime reporter at seventeen, a soldier in World War II, and later a filmmaker who made movies the way prizefighters throw punches—fast, raw, and aimed at the jaw. Underworld U.S.A. came late in his noir cycle, after Pickup on South Street and The Crimson Kimono. If those films toyed with subtlety, Underworld U.S.A. tears subtlety to pieces and grinds it into the pavement.

By 1961, Hollywood was losing its grip on noir. The classic shadowed alleys of the ’40s had given way to sleek Technicolor musicals and polished studio gloss. Fuller wasn’t having it. He delivered a black-and-white gut punch of corruption, cynicism, and moral collapse. It feels almost like a throwback—yet it was also a warning shot for the future.

The Plot: Revenge Served Cold, with a Side of Hypocrisy

We meet a boy—Tolly Devlin—who watches gangsters murder his father in the street. Noir children rarely grow up to be well-adjusted citizens, and Tolly is no exception. He spends his youth sharpening his grudge like a shiv, and by adulthood (played with dead-eyed conviction by Cliff Robertson), he’s ready to burn the underworld down brick by brick.

But this isn’t the clean-cut revenge of Westerns or war films. Fuller muddies the water. Tolly’s vengeance makes him as cold and manipulative as the gangsters he hunts. He doesn’t stand for justice. He stands for payback. And America, Fuller suggests, stands right beside him.

The brilliance of Underworld U.S.A. is in how revenge merges with ambition. Tolly works his way up the criminal ladder, not out of moral duty but to get close enough to twist the knife. Along the way, he’s seduced by money, power, and women—though in Fuller’s world, seduction is always just another form of betrayal.

Cliff Robertson’s Face: Half Hero, Half Tombstone

Cliff Robertson wasn’t Humphrey Bogart. He wasn’t Robert Mitchum. But in Underworld U.S.A., he doesn’t need to be. His Tolly Devlin is less a man than a machine—emotion buried under layers of bitterness. His eyes rarely soften; his smile feels carved in stone.

Robertson’s performance gives the film its unnerving stillness. Where Fuller’s camera charges forward with energy, Robertson grounds it with quiet menace. This is a noir protagonist stripped of glamour. No witty Chandler quips. No trench-coat nobility. Just raw revenge in a cheap suit.

The Women of the Underworld: Tough, Tragic, Disposable

If noir had a boarding school, Fuller’s women would be the ones smoking behind the chapel, already halfway to expulsion. Forget dreamy femme fatales with cigarette holders—Underworld U.S.A. gives us women who have traded glamour for grit.

  • Cuddles (Dolores Dorn) – The name says “burlesque headliner,” but what you get is a woman clinging to decency while the men around her play handball with morality. She’s tender, bruised, and the only flicker of conscience in Tolly’s revenge carnival. Naturally, that makes her useless in Fuller’s world. Tenderness is a liability, and in this film, liabilities get written out like bad cheques.

  • Sandy (Beatrice Kay) – Ah, now we’re talking. Sandy doesn’t flirt with illusions—she chain-smokes them. With that whiskey-soaked voice and razor wit, she isn’t here to be ornamental. She’s here to keep the wheels turning, cash counted, and men in check when they’re too busy punching each other to add. She’s the kind of underworld matriarch who knows every racket, every double-cross, and probably where Hoffa is buried. Beatrice Kay plays her with a delicious shrug that says: “Yes, we’re all going to hell, but I’ve already got my seat reserved.”

Together, Cuddles and Sandy are noir’s yin and yang: the dream that maybe there’s a way out, and the reality that there isn’t. Fuller doesn’t give either of them an escape clause. He just points the camera and reminds us that in the underworld, the men kill you, but the women see you coming.

Noir Under the Neon: Style as Substance

If the 1940s defined film noir as shadow and cigarette smoke, Fuller defined it as assault. His camera isn’t content to watch; it lunges, it slams, it thrusts. Violence isn’t stylised, it’s blunt. Characters don’t melt into the shadows—they crash into them.

The cinematography by Hal Mohr keeps everything sharp and clinical. No soft-focus romance here. The light is harsh, the angles jagged, and every frame drips with moral rot. Fuller doesn’t just show the underworld; he makes you feel complicit in it.

America on Trial: The Underworld Is the Overworld

The most biting element of Underworld U.S.A. isn’t the plot. It’s the allegory. Fuller’s gangsters don’t just run rackets; they run America. They’re into drugs, numbers, prostitution, and—pointedly—corporate respectability.

The “underworld” isn’t beneath society. It is society. Fuller practically screams the message: corruption and ambition are the twin pillars of the American Dream. Tolly isn’t an outsider crashing the gates. He’s simply the next in line.

It’s no accident the film arrived in 1961. This was the era of Senate hearings on organised crime, of Hoffa and the mob, of whispers that America’s shining postwar boom was greased with dirty money. Fuller makes the subtext explicit. When you look at Tolly, you don’t just see a hoodlum—you see the logical end point of a culture that rewards vengeance, greed, and ruthless ambition.

Fuller’s Violence: Cheap, Brutal, and Necessary

Violence in Underworld U.S.A. isn’t decorative. It isn’t meant to thrill. It’s meant to bruise. Fuller’s gangland beatings are abrupt, ugly, and over fast—like real violence. You don’t leave admiring the choreography; you leave with a sour taste.

That’s Fuller’s genius. He forces you to confront brutality without the Hollywood polish. In a way, he anticipates later crime cinema—Scorsese’s unflinching mob stories, Peckinpah’s blood-soaked morality plays. Fuller was already there, showing violence as a transaction, a negotiation, a way of life.

The Ending: No Redemption in the Underworld

Noir rarely ends with hugs and sunshine, and Fuller certainly wasn’t about to break tradition. Without spoiling the final scene, let’s just say Tolly’s obsession doesn’t end well. It’s fitting. Revenge in Fuller’s world isn’t cleansing—it’s corrosive.

The ending doesn’t offer closure, just inevitability. It’s as though Fuller is whispering: “This is America. This is how it works. Don’t expect justice.”

How It Fits in Film Noir’s Family Tree

Where does Underworld U.S.A. sit among the greats? It’s less iconic than Double Indemnity or The Maltese Falcon, but it belongs to a darker lineage—the “late noirs” that bridge the old Hollywood style and the raw grit of the ’60s and ’70s.

  • It echoes White Heat (1949) with its obsessive protagonist.

  • It foreshadows Mean Streets (1973) with its street-level cynicism.

  • It mirrors The Big Heat (1953) in its violent moral clarity.

But above all, it’s pure Samuel Fuller: brash, angry, and unwilling to play nice.

Final Verdict: Fuller’s Sermon of Blood and Betrayal

Underworld U.S.A. isn’t perfect. At times it feels heavy-handed, even cartoonish. Cliff Robertson’s stony performance might alienate those looking for a Bogart-style antihero. And Fuller’s lack of subtlety can feel like a mallet to the head.

But that’s the point. Fuller didn’t make films to soothe. He made them to agitate. Underworld U.S.A. is a crime saga, a revenge tragedy, and a sermon about America’s moral decay. It’s grim, it’s raw, and it sticks with you like a scar.

Rating: 7/10. Brutal, biting, and unmistakably Fuller. Not the most elegant noir, but one of the most honest.

 


 

Further Reading

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