The Untouchables (1959): Chicago, 1931. On the Southside, on a dead end street, there is a junkyard-- but it's really a front for a criminal empire run by Victor Salazar. Ness and his men are on the case; they keep intercepting his trucks, carrying shipments of booze. Barney Howe tells his boss Salazar that his problem is the operation's too spread out; but one big shipment of narcotics will give him the Northside, too-- Barney says he will "put Chicago in his pocket." Late at night, they get a call from a hood named Kierson who has info in his briefcase: the time and route of a $2-million commercial shipment of morphine crystals to a medical research center; he's to meet them at the corner of Mohawk and 23rd in 10 minutes. But rival hood Steve Ballard takes out his silencer, and pumps Kierson full of lead, and makes off with the briefcase. Around midnight, Salazar orders all his boys to find Kierson; ironically, one of Salazar's "Enforcers" is Steve Ballard, the guy who bumped Kierson off! But it seems Ballard hates his boss; Ballard has a scar on his cheek from where Salazar cut him once, "for not doing as he's told." (Fred Santos doesn't like Salazar, either.) A couple of nights later, Ballard and Santos-- armed with tear-gas canisters, gas masks and choppers-- steal the morphine shipment at the train station; Santos gets shot by a cop, so Ballard carries the 6 small crates of morphine off by himself. Ballard also comes up with the dough to have chemist Martin Pegler turn the 150 kilograms of crystal morphine into a more useable form. Ness and his men show up at Salazar's fancy office, on the 2nd floor of a building on the junk yard site; Ness has a search warrant. Ness suspects Salazar hijacked the morphine, since Fred Santos, who was shot at the scene of the crime, was one of his boys. Barney Howe takes a swing at Ness, to deliberately get himself arrested. At the police station, he tells Ness his real name is Barney Retzik-- he's been working undercover with the Narcotics Bureau. He asks Ness to take the pressure off Salazar for a while; Ness balks at first, he and his men have been working for 6 months on the case. But Barney Retzik promises Ness, when Salazar gets his hands on the morphine, he'll contact Ness and he can arrest Salazar. Ness goes along with it. Meanwhile Max, who has a legit restaurant (where Rosie sings and plays the piano), is one of the big narcotics distributors; he has a meet with 3 other big distributors: Monett, Leopold and Meyerhof-- they'll raise cash to buy the hijacked morphine. Pegler, working in a lab (in a condemned building at 1060 Buffalo Street), has converted the stuff and put it into candy: which now has 10% heroin. (morphine can be turned into heroin by using acetic anhydride and heating to 176 degrees.) Steve Ballard offers to take Pegler to the train station to get out of town, but takes him for a "one-way ride" instead. Ballard plans on leaving town with his main squeeze Rosie, right after his payoff. Salazar had set Max up with his district a long time ago; Max was under strict orders never to buy dope from anyone but Salazar. In his office, Salazar sweats the truth out of Max-- he admits that he and Monett, Leopold and Meyerhof are scheduled to meet at 1060 Buffalo Street that night, to buy the hijacked stuff. Salazar has Max rubbed out; then Salazar tells Barney he will be there tonight, to get "all the guys that double-crossed me." (he doesn't know that Barney is setting him up for a double-cross.) That night at 1060 Buffalo Street, Ballard and Barney show up; also Monett, Leopold, Meyerhof and their boys-- while Salazar with a couple of his hitmen wait outside on the sidewalk, and Ness and his men are hidden from view, ready to strike. Monett and the other 2 distributors give Ballard a big pile of cash, and start to walk outside with armloads of the heroin-laced candy. As they're going down the steps, Salazar yells, "You crumbs don't buy from me-- you don't buy!" And Salazar and his boys gun them down. Ness and his men attack, there's a big shootout. Inside, Ballard shoots at Barney-- but Barney returns the fire and kills Ballard. 5 gang members are captured, about as many are shot dead; Ness himself shot Salazar. Ness says to Barney, "It doesn't make any difference now whether Salazar's with possession or not." And so Barney Retzik, undercover narcotics man, had helped Ness and his Untouchables to smash a major narcotics ring. (synopsis by: kdh)

Starring:

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

Genre:

Action, Crime, Drama