Underworld, U.S.A.

Perhaps borrowing a popular storyline from the Western genre, Samuel Fuller’s Underworld, U.S.A. is a late-cycle revenge noir in which small-time crook Tolly Devlin (Cliff Robertson) spends his life avenging the beating death of his father by four mobsters which he witnessed as a kid. Without shying away from ruthlessness and brutality, Fuller exposes Tolly’s psychological scars in the form of an oppressive fear of loss, especially evident in his relationships with two women: his maternal figure Sandy (Beatrice Kay), who’s shown him tough love since childhood, and Cuddles (Dolores Dorn), a money-runner for the mob who ultimately falls in love with him (Tolly laughs uproariously when she confesses that she dreams of their marriage and children). Despite Tully’s murderous endeavor, we root for him without reservation because, besides running over little girls and setting men on fire, the killers and their crime boss, the repulsive Earl Connors (Robert Emhardt), are targeting children for drug addiction (“There are at least 13 million kids in this country between the ages of 10 and 15…don’t tell me the end of the needle has a conscience”).