The Untouchables (1959): Chicago, December 1931. With Al Capone in prison, the bootlegging part of his empire was split in 2. One of Capone's lieutenants, Mayer Wartel, acquired the speakeasies; another lieutenant, Karl Positan, acquired the breweries and distilleries. In an attempt to take over the entire operation, Positan withholds his whiskey and beer; the number of speaks flourishing drops to an all-time Prohibition low. Eliot Ness and his men keep an eye on the situation. Nitti's plenty sore. As collector for Capone, Nitti has a meet with Mayer Wartel. Nitti snaps, "Candy stores take in more!" When Wartel says you can't operate speaks without booze, Nitti tells him, "I don't want to hear no excuses. Excuses ain't money-- only money is money!" Nitti makes it clear that Wartel's problem with Positan is his business, and he better take care of it and soon. Wartel sends "Happy" (so nicknamed because he never smiles) Levinsky and 10 of his boys armed with tommy guns to the Kayope Hotel where Positan is staying. Luckily for Positan, he's not in right now, but the boys leave a message: 10 choppers shoot up the lobby, making it look like a war zone. Ness and his men survey the damage. Positan gets the message; Wartel takes over operation of the breweries and distilleries, and Wartel gets the booze for his speaks. Wartel opens his speaks again. Ness and his men start their raids again. When a large newspaper, the Chicago Leader, prints front page stories about Wartel, he retaliates. Wartel and Levinsky and half a dozen boys pay the paper a visit; while the boys smash the press room in the basement, Wartel shoots editor Michael Shaw upstairs. But Wartel made a mistake, he used his special, hand-made, lightweight .45 automatic gun. Eliot Ness checks with ballistics. Under microscopic examination, a barrel scraping found on the cartridge case reveals an aluminum alloy, highly unusual; this was the work of an artisan. So Ness begins asking questions of master gun-makers in town. There are only 3 master gunsmiths: Frank Ludlum, Walter Byrd, and the 3rd is Herman Kihn who, unbeknownst to Ness, makes and cleans & oils guns and machine guns for Wartel and his mob. Levinsky sees Ness at Kihn's shop, and goes straight to Wartel. And so Wartel sends for the country's top hitman, Harry Strauss a.k.a. "Pittsburgh Phil" to rub out Kihn; Phil is the best, with 89 hits, and also expensive: he wants 25 Gs for the job. Phil visits Kihn. The gunsmith tells him they stopped making silencers in 1929 due to public pressure; also, they were never perfected, they were still noisy and needed a bulky attachment. But Kihn is making a perfect silencer, and will give it to Phil. Later, Ness warns Kihn that Wartel wants him killed, he's a dead man. Kihn says if he rats on the mob he'll be rubbed out, so he's a dead man either way. Kihn goes to the movies 3 times a week. One night, Phil is sitting behind him, with a 10-inch knife that could go through 2-inches of the back of the theatre seat and 8-inches of Kihn. Next day, Phil tells Wartel what happened: the film broke, the theater lights came on, and he saw Ness sitting behind him, so he couldn't do anything. Since Phil knows that Ness is tailing him, he is determined to kill the gunsmith right under Ness' federal nose; this hit will be his Masterpiece. On New Year's Eve, Phil takes Kihn to Willie Poloni's club, a speak called the Green Cat; sitting a few tables away from them are Ness and Lee Hobson. Phil holds the silencer under the table and shoots Kihn, expecting a quiet kill; to his shock, the "silencer" goes off with the roar of a cannon. Instead of shooting Kihn unnoticed, everybody in the place is staring at him with stark amazement-- including Eliot Ness, who makes his first arrest of the New Year. Eliot Ness and Lee Hobson ride in the ambulance with Kihn. The gunsmith says he got both of them: Pittsburgh Phil for his murder, and he took the gun that Wartel used to kill the editor, so Wartel will worry about that for the rest of his life; then Kihn dies. Ness has the new editor of the Chicago Leader, William Adcock, print headlines that Ness has the gun and is calling in a ballistics expert, Prof. Warren Hinds, to pin Shaw's murder rap on Wartel. That night, when Wartel breaks into the Professor's lab, Ness is waiting there. Wartel fires at Ness, and Eliot shoots back, killing him. Then Ness gets on the blower and gives the story to editor Bill Adcock-- just in time for the late edition. (synopsis by: kdh) --------------------------------- [facts: Harry Strauss a.k.a. Pittsburgh Phil, born July 28, 1909, was a member of a crime syndicate known as "Murder Incorporated." Due to the testimony of Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, Phil got the electric chair in Sing Sing Prison, on June 12, 1941; he was 31 years old.]

Starring:

Abel Fernandez, Nicholas Georgiade, Paul Picerni, Robert Stack, Steve London, Walter Winchell

Genre:

Action, Crime, Drama