"The Shakedown" on the face of it appears an unremarkable effort from the days of low budget crime movies, churned out by the dozen from British film studios, yet Canadian director John Lemont handles the routine plotline with considerable style, with a breathless pace that never holds up, a decent script that only occasionally falters, and a good cast with all kinds of familiar faces popping up every few minutes: Bill Owen, Donald Pleasence, Harry H Corbett, Robert Beatty, Larry Taylor and even Leila Williams, who began presenting the long-running children's TV programme Blue Peter around this time.
The story revolves around a hardened con (Terence Morgan) about to be set free from prison, finding it hard to set up another racket when he is released, but eventually managing to do so when he steals a fellow con's ill gotten gains (Corbett) by setting up a model school, merely a cover for blackmailing well-off professional men ensnared in taking seedy pics of said young female models. A senior policeman (Beatty) is however staking out Morgan and assigns an undercover policewoman (Hazel Court) to find evidence of his new criminal activity, putting her in obvious danger.
All this is fairly hackneyed material, yet Lemont engenders it all at a taut, ferociously quick pace from the very start, with some mordantly hard-boiled dialogue, and mostly decent performances from the cast.
Terence Morgan didn't always get full backing from the critics, but his oily, superficial charm and ruthless desire for making money in the seediest way possible succeeds in conveying such an ugly, exploitative character as this oddly compelling if not even sometimes pitiable. Donald Pleasence is one of the gullible characters Morgan exploits for financial gain, who gives a fine performance as an alcoholic photographer, though he curiously disappears from the action without proper explanation. But despite occasional plot holes like this and some variable support performances from such as a pre-Steptoe Harry H Corbett as a rival gangster, director and co-scriptwriter Lemont keeps it all going at a non-stop lick, also with inevitably cheap-looking sets that work effectively and convincingly in the kind of milieu depicted.
Ignored and dismissed in previous years as just another lowbrow B crime effort, "The Shakedown" has become something of a cultish item in recent years, with an improved reputation, one of the better of its usually unremarkable kind, and now deservedly so which is most definitely worth a look and of more attention.
Rating: 7 out of 10.
The story revolves around a hardened con (Terence Morgan) about to be set free from prison, finding it hard to set up another racket when he is released, but eventually managing to do so when he steals a fellow con's ill gotten gains (Corbett) by setting up a model school, merely a cover for blackmailing well-off professional men ensnared in taking seedy pics of said young female models. A senior policeman (Beatty) is however staking out Morgan and assigns an undercover policewoman (Hazel Court) to find evidence of his new criminal activity, putting her in obvious danger.
All this is fairly hackneyed material, yet Lemont engenders it all at a taut, ferociously quick pace from the very start, with some mordantly hard-boiled dialogue, and mostly decent performances from the cast.
Terence Morgan didn't always get full backing from the critics, but his oily, superficial charm and ruthless desire for making money in the seediest way possible succeeds in conveying such an ugly, exploitative character as this oddly compelling if not even sometimes pitiable. Donald Pleasence is one of the gullible characters Morgan exploits for financial gain, who gives a fine performance as an alcoholic photographer, though he curiously disappears from the action without proper explanation. But despite occasional plot holes like this and some variable support performances from such as a pre-Steptoe Harry H Corbett as a rival gangster, director and co-scriptwriter Lemont keeps it all going at a non-stop lick, also with inevitably cheap-looking sets that work effectively and convincingly in the kind of milieu depicted.
Ignored and dismissed in previous years as just another lowbrow B crime effort, "The Shakedown" has become something of a cultish item in recent years, with an improved reputation, one of the better of its usually unremarkable kind, and now deservedly so which is most definitely worth a look and of more attention.
Rating: 7 out of 10.