. . . which gave rise to one of the great lines of all gangster movies, "Can this be the end of Rico?" That's the question that assistant district attorney Ferguson's star witness, Joseph Rico, wails after Bogie lets him slip nine stories above the pavement. Ferguson's clunky caper leaves so much room for improvement, it inspired key elements of most subsequent Alfred Hitchcock movies. For instance, the ludicrously complicated murder-by-stranger premise of THE ENFORCER is beautifully simplified by Hitch to "Criss-Cross" for STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. A marsh mysteriously preserving the eyes of corpses for weeks on end becomes the more plausible bog which swallows Jamie Leigh Curtis' mom in the middle of PSYCHO. The constantly-spreading circle of connections to be "rubbed out" around "Albert Mendoza" here foreshadows the necktie killer in FRENZY. A better question might be, "Which later Hitchcock flicks were NOT heavily influenced by THE ENFORCER?

"The Enforcer" is a gripping tale about an investigation into the activities of a crime syndicate boss and the efforts of an Assistant D.A. to bring him to justice. The criminal in question was the head of a group of contract killers who carried out murders to order and avoided detection because their operatives never had any connection with their victims and so there were never any known motives or obvious leads for the authorities to follow up in their investigations. This concept, although very familiar to audiences today, was something very topical at the time of the film's release and also a matter of great public interest.In the period immediately before the release of "The Enforcer", Senate Committee hearings on organised crime were chaired by Senator Estes Kefauver. These hearings were given national television coverage during a period when the medium was very new to most viewers and the revelations about the pervasive nature of organised crime and the existence of the outfit known as "Murder Incorporated" attracted extremely large audiences. It was during these broadcasts that the general public first became aware of some of the jargon used by hired killers and "The Enforcer" is credited as being the first movie to feature the words "contract", "hit" and "fingerman" in this context.After a four year investigation into the activities of crime boss Albert Mendoza (Everett Sloane), Assistant D.A. Martin Ferguson (Humphrey Bogart) has a witness who has agreed to testify that he saw Mendoza kill a man. When the witness, Joe Rico (Ted de Corsia), dies suddenly as the result of an accident, Ferguson and Police Captain Frank Nelson (Roy Roberts) undertake a meticulous review of their investigation to date to try to find another piece of information which could lead to them being able to get Mendoza convicted.The case files confirm that the investigation started when a frantic young man called "Duke" Malloy (Lawrence Tolan) visited a police station and reported that he's been forced to kill his girlfriend. It transpired that he was a hired killer who'd fallen in love with his intended victim and when he'd initially refused to go through with the job, he'd been pressured by other gang members into completing the contract. The overwrought Malloy hanged himself in a police cell and the investigation that followed involved police officers in gathering information from a variety of people including Malloy's fellow gang members.Ferguson and Nelson's review eventually brings to light the name of another person who would be a perfect witness but unfortunately Mendoza becomes aware of this person's identity at the same and this leads to a desperate race against time for the police to find the potential witness before Mendoza's men do.The movie's structure is interesting as an account of the police investigation is given in flashback with the stories of each of the interviewees often constituting a flashback within a flashback. The action is delivered with a good deal of pace and tension and despite the story's closeness to real events, the movie's style is always entertaining and not overly solemn in the way that some docu-noirs can be.The colourful collection of characters featured in "The Enforcer" are brought to life vividly by the excellent cast and Humphrey Bogart is especially good as a man who is extremely determined and powerfully focused on his task but is nevertheless also very controlled and methodical when necessary.

In 1960 there was a movie called Murder Inc., telling the story of that infamous organization. The book by that name actually came out in 1951 and also inspired this movie. Humphrey Bogart plays the Burton Turkus character, who was so successful in putting away many of the members of Murder Inc. and sending to the electric chair the only major mob boss ever to be executed, Louis (Lepke) Buchalter. Turkus was an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn who became known to the mob as Mr. Arsenic because of his incorruptibility and ability to convict organized crime figures. He was also referred to in the press as the only honest man in New York City, an exaggeration, but perhaps only a slight one. Even Turkus' old boss, William O'Dwyer, who rode Turkus' good work into election as the city's mayor, was later forced to resign among charges of massive corruption and mob connections. Everett Sloane is excellently cast as the brilliant, brutal Lepke like character, a small, slight, but terrifying man, who one policeman described as having the eyes of a doe.The movie is wonderful in revealing to audiences of the day the machinations of the mob. We see that these are not men of honor, but in reality a society of hoodlums whose every move is motivated by a desire to enrich and empower themselves, and where the rule for bosses on the run is kill everyone, friend and foe alike, who could conceivably incriminate them. We also see how the mob, now concerned about electronic surveillance has come up with code words like contract and hit to confuse law enforcement.Bogart's device of confronting the incarcerated Sloane with reminders of his victims almost backfires, but instead sets up the film's climax as it demonstrates the long reach possessed by crime chieftains even behind bars. And though seemingly all of his witnesses have been murdered or otherwise neutralized, we see a way for Bogart to eventually prosecute his protagonist.One moment in the film that is simultaneously comic and chilling comes when Rico is on the way back from a murder. Riding in the back of a truck with the victim in a laundry cart that is nearby, Rico, who is the chief, looks at one of his subordinates, Vince, who is acting very nervously. Concerned about a possible weak link, he turns to Vince and says, "You know, I think there's room for you in the basket too." With that he casually kills the man, as the group of thugs just calmly continue on.In real life Lepke does get executed along with two of his chief henchmen, Mendy Weiss and Louis Capone (no relation to Al). Loyal to the end both men chose the same final meal as the boss, a chicken dinner.

Dire! This hard-boiled crime melodrama is about contract killing and it traces, rather naively I thought, the genesis of the whole enterprise and is said to be based on fact. It's distinguished slightly by the use of flashbacks within flashbacks and by some fine, moody cinematography by Robert Burks but, with the exception of Bogart, (and even he is playing well below par), it is appallingly acted. Still, sometimes a bad performance can be even more memorable than a good one and in this respect Ted De Corsia's 'Squealer' ends up stealing the film. On the other hand, both Zero Mostel and Everett Sloane probably reach a career nadir here. As for the direction of Bretaigne Windust, it's perfunctory at best. Inhabiting a vacuum somewhere between "The House on 42nd Street" and "The Phenix City Story", the film is neither fish nor fowl, (it's mostly foul). Missed opportunities all round.