It seems that some screen stories can seem dated after only a few years and have no or little relevance to the new times.* Then there are some that come back into the relating to the audience as if it were ripped right of today's headlines.
So it is with this Episode of THE UNTOUCHABLES, "The White Slavers" has come to have some real connection with we Americans here in the 21st century, maybe even in a way more so than the audience of 1960.
In a nutshell, the story is one concerning Big Time Organized Prostitution in Chicago and the Capone Gang's running of it. The plot has Ness and Company getting involved in combating the racket's practice and proliferation through the efforts of a now retired Madam. Thouigh not a Federal Offense,The Untouchables get involved with the policing of the problem when word gets out that there are some of the Mob guys away in Mexico, recruiting girls to supply fresh talent for the Crime Syndicate's Brothels.
There is a particularly brutal, though not graphic,scene in which the gangland murderers use Thompson Sub Machine Guns to kill the truck load of Mexican Girl "recruits", leaving their bodies in the woods. This was to dispose of them as evidence, the gangsters having got wind of a trap for them by the Feds at the Mexican-American border.
As for the relevance, we offer the following. The story involves the operations of a Federal Agency of Law Enforcement (not the FBI). Their investigation takes them 'South of the Border' to Mexico, where the underworld thugs have extended their tentacles to victimize and exploit poor girls from deep in the rural districts of Mexico. So it is that the Criminal Conspiracy is a sort of outsourcing.
In the course of the story, we hear a couple of strangely ironic developments in the plot. It seemed almost laughable, now.It is a minor road bump in what is otherwise a especially brutal crime story.
When Mr. Ness finds out about the planned truck shipment of the girls from Mexico, he states that he is going to inform the Immigration department and , get this, he will get assistance from the Mexican Authorities! With today's porous Mexican border and our impotent Federal Immigration Border Guards, these statements translate like a joke in 2007! All we needed was a 1950's style laugh track.
* In this vein, somebody once said that nothing dates faster than a Bob Hope Monologue.
So it is with this Episode of THE UNTOUCHABLES, "The White Slavers" has come to have some real connection with we Americans here in the 21st century, maybe even in a way more so than the audience of 1960.
In a nutshell, the story is one concerning Big Time Organized Prostitution in Chicago and the Capone Gang's running of it. The plot has Ness and Company getting involved in combating the racket's practice and proliferation through the efforts of a now retired Madam. Thouigh not a Federal Offense,The Untouchables get involved with the policing of the problem when word gets out that there are some of the Mob guys away in Mexico, recruiting girls to supply fresh talent for the Crime Syndicate's Brothels.
There is a particularly brutal, though not graphic,scene in which the gangland murderers use Thompson Sub Machine Guns to kill the truck load of Mexican Girl "recruits", leaving their bodies in the woods. This was to dispose of them as evidence, the gangsters having got wind of a trap for them by the Feds at the Mexican-American border.
As for the relevance, we offer the following. The story involves the operations of a Federal Agency of Law Enforcement (not the FBI). Their investigation takes them 'South of the Border' to Mexico, where the underworld thugs have extended their tentacles to victimize and exploit poor girls from deep in the rural districts of Mexico. So it is that the Criminal Conspiracy is a sort of outsourcing.
In the course of the story, we hear a couple of strangely ironic developments in the plot. It seemed almost laughable, now.It is a minor road bump in what is otherwise a especially brutal crime story.
When Mr. Ness finds out about the planned truck shipment of the girls from Mexico, he states that he is going to inform the Immigration department and , get this, he will get assistance from the Mexican Authorities! With today's porous Mexican border and our impotent Federal Immigration Border Guards, these statements translate like a joke in 2007! All we needed was a 1950's style laugh track.
* In this vein, somebody once said that nothing dates faster than a Bob Hope Monologue.
