Underworld U.S.A. (1961) ***

Could be a companion piece for The Oscar (1966). Dumb punks with scarcely a redeemable feature. Treat women like garbage. Obsessed by an unachievable aim. In this case it’s revenge for the death of a no-good hoodlum father that provides an expose of the Mob. Sam Fuller opts for a documentary approach, rather than delving into the soap opera of The Oscar, and at times info dumps threaten to run away with the picture. While raw enough, lacks the emotional kick of The Naked Kiss (1964).

When habitual jailbird Tolly (Cliff Robertson) comes across one of his father’s murderers in gaol he tricks him into revealing the names of the three others – Gela (Paul Dubov), Gunther (Gerald Milton) and Smith (Allan Gruener) – who are now high-ranking gangsters. Having gained entrée to the hoodlum kingdom, he becomes an unlikely ally of top cop Driscoll (Larry Gates), devising a clever plan to suggest to Mob boss Connors (Robert Emhardt) that his lieutenants are so untrustworthy they should be rubbed out.

Along the way he enjoys a dalliance with a Mob runner Cuddles (Dolores Dorn) who draws the lines at handling drugs, and ruthlessly pulls her into his scheme. Motherless Tolly’s mother figure Sandy (Beatrice Kay) does her best to put him off his skulduggery.

When he’s not robbing or working on his scheme, he’s either seething or dashing Cuddles’s dreams of living together, not as his moll, put up in an apartment, but as an honest couple. He’s not remotely interested in doing the right thing or imagining himself as a public-spirited hero and would rather be executioner than laboriously bringing his targets in to face justice.

But the cops are equally ruthless, fully aware of the dangers facing informants, but so intent of catching the gangsters they do little to minimize the peril. Characters pop up in bit parts to make points about police corruption and when Fuller lurches away from Tolly to deliver lectures about the extent of the Mob’s tentacles it loses focus.

But all the statistics and operational details count for a lot less than venal assassin Gus (Richard Rust) cold-bloodedly running over a young girl to deliver a warning to others and Connors intending to turn schoolkids into drug addicts.

You can see why Fuller fell back on stats because there was hardly anything new to say about gangsters after a three-year crime biopic spree kicked off by Machine Gun Kelly (1958). Every major crime figure had been given the treatment – Al Capone (1959), Ma Barker’s Killer Brood (1960), Murder Inc. (1960), Pretty Boy Floyd (1960), The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960), King of the Roaring 20s: The Story of Arnold Rothstein, Mad Dog Coll (1961) and Dutch Schulz in Portrait of a Mobster (1961).

There wasn’t much new about Tolly except he believed his killings were sanctioned by a complicit police force and his own ideas about justice.

That said, Cliff Robertson (The Devil’s Brigade), before his twisted grin got the better of him, and he resorted to scene-stealing, is excellent as a driven dumb thug who lets anything worthwhile, namely the courageous Cuddles, slip through his figures. And Robert Emhardt has a ball running his empire from the poolside. But mostly, it’s tough guys talking tough, sometimes with the aid of a cigar.

You can’t not have seen most of this before. Sure, Fuller is a bit more stylish. The death of the father, all shadow, might be a homage to film noir. But, like all gangster films with the exception of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and The Godfather (1972) and the Scorsese movies, it loses audience empathy because Fuller is unable to make likeable his unlikeable characters.