Leofwine_draca
UNDERCOVER GIRL is another British B-picture with a crime story and lead role for Canadian star Paul Carpenter. Carpenter plays a slightly washed up photographer working on a local newspaper who becomes rather peeved when his brother in law is murdered by persons unknown. With the police slow to act he decides to investigate the mystery himself and soon uncovers a sinister blackmail plot centred around a strange nursing home.It's predictable stuff indeed but nonetheless a film which gets by with a certain finesse and features all of the right elements in the right order. A short running time and snappy pacing means that this is a never less than engaging thriller. Carpenter is a more than dependable leading man and second only to John Bentley in the sheer number of appearances he made in British B-thrillers during the 1950s. UNDERCOVER GIRL is a dodgy title because no girl in the film goes undercover, although the American re-titling of ASSIGNMENT REDHEAD is equally invalid and anyway had already been used for a film made the previous year.The film is particularly strong for its female characters, principal of whom is the lovely Kay Callard who looks very arresting with blonde hair. Maya Koumani has a memorable cameo as a buxom model in one randomly inserted moment, although the most notable of all is Jackie Collins as a blackmail victim. Bruce Seton was best known on TV and in film for playing detectives but makes a very good fist of the master villain here. Watch out for B-movie favourite Milton Reid in an early role as a hired thug complete with goatee beard. This is one of the best films I've seen from cheapie director Francis Searle.
malcolmgsw
Yes a typical Butchers B film from the 1950s.It moves at quite a pace particularly in the last reel.Though the title left me a bit bewildered since there is really no undercover girl in the film.The film centres around Bruce Set on a club owner who has a lifeline in blackmail and murder.Unusual to see Set on as a crook.He was to play Fabian of the yard,and lived to regret it.It typefaces him and all but ruined his career.Although essentially a British B film it was clearly made with the American market in mind.There can be no other explanation for the inordinate amount of gun play around at the end.The film is no great shakes but passes a reasonable hour.
James Hitchcock
When Billy Peters, an investigative journalist, is shot dead in a deserted London street, it soon transpires that the reason for his killing was that his investigations were getting too close to the reasons behind another murder, that of a wealthy playboy named Mark Buxton. This sounds like a job for Scotland Yard, but Johnny Carter, a colleague of the dead man who also happens to be his brother-in-law, starts doing his own digging, and uncovers a murky business involving Soho gangsters, blackmail and drug dealing. He also discovers another personal connection to the affair in that Peggy, the actress sister of his girlfriend Joan, has become one of the gang's victims.The above could be the plot of a typical film noir, and some British directors, notably Carol Reed and Robert Hamer, did indeed adopt the American noir style. "Undercover Girl", however, is not really made in that style. A few night-time scenes do indeed recall expressionist noir photography, but for the most part the photography and the direction are flat and uninteresting; most scenes seem to have been shot on a single camera, without any cross-cutting, doubtless because the film was made on a very limited budget.I assumed that a low-budget B-movie like this one would have been made for the home market only, but "Undercover Girl" was in fact also released in America where it was known as "Assignment Redhead", possibly to avoid confusion with another "Undercover Girl" made a few years earlier. Neither the British title nor the American one makes much sense; there are several girls in the movie, but none of them actually go undercover. Johnny is not given an assignment to investigate Billy's death- in fact, his editor tries to warn him off, and his investigations are all carried out on his own initiative. (The only "assignment" he receives is to photograph a Brazilian beauty queen, a character presumably introduced for the sake of younger male viewers happy to watch any film which featured, however briefly, a scantily-clad glamour girl). As for "redhead", the film is made in black-and-white, so we cannot tell if any of the characters are red-headed. Both Johnny and Joan are played by Canadian actors, Paul Carpenter and Kay Callard, and I wondered if this was done to increase the film's appeal in the American market as their accents would have sounded more familiar to American ears. Joan and Peggy are supposed to be sisters, but nobody seems to have noticed that their accents do not match. Or, if somebody did notice, they did not care enough to do anything about it. Peggy is played by Jackie Collins, who at this period was trying to follow her sister Joan into the acting profession, but if this film is anything to go by Jackie did not share her elder sibling's dramatic talents and was wise to move into the literary world. To be fair to Jackie, nobody else in the film displays much in the way of dramatic talent either. Admittedly, B-movie crime dramas were not generally noted for Oscar-class acting, but they did occasionally feature rising stars on their way up; Joan Collins herself, for example, had made a couple in the early fifties. Nobody involved here, however, appears to have gone on to greater things. Banal direction and run-of- the-mill acting are not the film's only weaknesses; the sets are drab and boring and the plot can be difficult to follow. The running time is only 68 minutes, but somehow it seemed much longer. "Undercover Girl" still occasionally turns up on British television, but I cannot say it is still worth watching. 4/10
wilvram
Some confusion exists over UNDERCOVER GIRL, as it was released in the US under the equally meaningless title ASSIGNMENT REDHEAD. This happened to be the name of another British crime film, made the previous year and known in the US as MILLION DOLLAR MANHUNT, thus leading to credits for the two productions getting muddled on occasions.Here, regular 'B' lead Paul Carpenter plays a photographer taking over the investigation into a shady nightclub owner, whom, he believes, is responsible for his reporter brother-in-law's murder. He works for the kind of magazine that mixes glamour photos with articles "lifting the lid off Soho" and exposing gambling rackets - "what goes on behind the net curtains". So much for the supposedly sedate Britain of 1957. Meanwhile Carpenter's girlfriend Kay Callard is concerned about sister Jackie Collins who's also involved with the vicious club owner/gangster, played by Bruce Seton, best known at the time for his portrayal of that exemplar of 1950s law and order, Fabian of the Yard.Carpenter uncovers a blackmail racket and drug pushing, centred on a dodgy nursing home, but, flatly presented and directed, it's not as interesting as it sounds. Obviously made on a low budget, time is padded out with Carpenter taking photos of Maya Koumani as 'Miss Brazil' while the background score of Bill Trytel further reinforces the resemblance to the kind of 1930s quota quickie of which he was a veteran. As an actress, Jackie Collins doesn't do badly, though inevitably, is more memorable for her sensational figure.
