"Guns Girls and Gangsters" director Edward L. Cahn was one of those dependable Hollywood helmers who specialized in low-budget, black & white westerns, gangster sagas, and horror chillers as second features and/or drive-in theatre fodder during his prolific career as a B-movie director with over 120 films to his credit. "Inside the Mafia" was one of many crime films from the Fifties that depicted the Italian mafia without an accent. Cahn and "Atomic Submarine" scenarist Orville H. Hampton drew on the headlines of the day and cobbled together a sanitized version of Albert Anastasia's murder, the exile of Lucky Luciano, and the high-level mob convention in rural Appalachia as "Inside the Mafia" with a sturdy cast featuring Cameron Mitchell, Robert Strauss, Edward Platt, James Brown, and Frank Gerstle. The action unfolds with the attempted murder of a notorious Albert Anastasia-like crime boss. Augie Martello (veteran villain Ted de Corsia of "The Lady from Shanghai") is seated in a barber's chair with a towel wrapped around his mug when Julie Otranto (Frank Gerstle of "D. O. A.") and an accomplice surprise him with a hail of lead.
Miraculously, Martello survives in fiction what Anastasia didn't survive in fact. Confined to a hospital bed under the vigilant eyes of his bodyguard, Sam Galey (Robert Strauss of "Stalag 13"), Augie briefs another tough guy subaltern, Tony Ledo (Cameron Mitchell of "Garden of Evil"), about a scheme to ice kingpin gangster Johnny Lucero (Grant Richards of "Night of Mystery") who is sneaking back into the country after a decade in exile. The syndicate is in trouble, and Lucero is flying back to straighten out the situation. Lucero is supposed to land at a remote airport in the boondocks and then preside over a convention of mob bosses. Predictably, nothing goes as planned for either Lucero or Ledo. Augie dispatches Ledo and Galey to kill Lucero when he steps off the plane. These thugs in sunglasses take the airport operator, Rod Balcom (Louis Jean Heydt of "The Big Sleep"), hostage along with his family and sweat it out until Lucero arrives. Complications occur when Ledo learns Augie has died from the wounds he received in the barbershop shooting. Ledo tries to cut another deal with Lucero that would assure him of a top-level job in the reorganized mob. However, the crime bosses veto the idea during a vote.
Most of the action focuses on the suspenseful wait and all the unforeseen complications that arise when Ledo and Galey take Balcom and his family hostage. The cast is convincing enough and the mobsters look intimidating in their heavy, dark sunglasses, snap-brim fedoras, and overcoats. Unfortunately, "Inside the Mafia" generates only minimal excitement during its brief 72-minute runtime. One exciting moment occurs near the finale when a Galey does a header, tumbling down a set of wooden stairs, demolishing most of the banister as he smashes through it. Whoever performed that stunt deserves an ovation. Ultimately, as in all Hollywood 'crime doesn't pay' yarns, the greedy mobsters, who don't trust each other farther than they can sling bullets at each other, about the same time that the authorities arrive in force to flush them out with tear gas. One of the problems with "Inside the Mafia" is the rut the film degenerates into after Ledo and Galey take hostages. In one respect, "Inside the Mafia" reminded me of an early Sinatra epic "Suddenly" (1954) where an assassin and his thugs take over a house near a railroad depot and hold a family at gunpoint. They plan to kill the President of the United States as he gets off the train. The plot bogs down in the interaction between the gangsters and the innocent bystanders. The same thing happens here, too. Indeed, it is a staple among Hollywood crime thrillers going back as far as "The Petrified Forest" (1936) where the action grinds to a halt and characters argue with each other. Predictably, none of the gangsters are depicted in a sympathetic light. More yapping than scrapping, "Inside the Mafia" qualifies as tame from fade-in to fade out.
Miraculously, Martello survives in fiction what Anastasia didn't survive in fact. Confined to a hospital bed under the vigilant eyes of his bodyguard, Sam Galey (Robert Strauss of "Stalag 13"), Augie briefs another tough guy subaltern, Tony Ledo (Cameron Mitchell of "Garden of Evil"), about a scheme to ice kingpin gangster Johnny Lucero (Grant Richards of "Night of Mystery") who is sneaking back into the country after a decade in exile. The syndicate is in trouble, and Lucero is flying back to straighten out the situation. Lucero is supposed to land at a remote airport in the boondocks and then preside over a convention of mob bosses. Predictably, nothing goes as planned for either Lucero or Ledo. Augie dispatches Ledo and Galey to kill Lucero when he steps off the plane. These thugs in sunglasses take the airport operator, Rod Balcom (Louis Jean Heydt of "The Big Sleep"), hostage along with his family and sweat it out until Lucero arrives. Complications occur when Ledo learns Augie has died from the wounds he received in the barbershop shooting. Ledo tries to cut another deal with Lucero that would assure him of a top-level job in the reorganized mob. However, the crime bosses veto the idea during a vote.
Most of the action focuses on the suspenseful wait and all the unforeseen complications that arise when Ledo and Galey take Balcom and his family hostage. The cast is convincing enough and the mobsters look intimidating in their heavy, dark sunglasses, snap-brim fedoras, and overcoats. Unfortunately, "Inside the Mafia" generates only minimal excitement during its brief 72-minute runtime. One exciting moment occurs near the finale when a Galey does a header, tumbling down a set of wooden stairs, demolishing most of the banister as he smashes through it. Whoever performed that stunt deserves an ovation. Ultimately, as in all Hollywood 'crime doesn't pay' yarns, the greedy mobsters, who don't trust each other farther than they can sling bullets at each other, about the same time that the authorities arrive in force to flush them out with tear gas. One of the problems with "Inside the Mafia" is the rut the film degenerates into after Ledo and Galey take hostages. In one respect, "Inside the Mafia" reminded me of an early Sinatra epic "Suddenly" (1954) where an assassin and his thugs take over a house near a railroad depot and hold a family at gunpoint. They plan to kill the President of the United States as he gets off the train. The plot bogs down in the interaction between the gangsters and the innocent bystanders. The same thing happens here, too. Indeed, it is a staple among Hollywood crime thrillers going back as far as "The Petrified Forest" (1936) where the action grinds to a halt and characters argue with each other. Predictably, none of the gangsters are depicted in a sympathetic light. More yapping than scrapping, "Inside the Mafia" qualifies as tame from fade-in to fade out.