A straight-faced thriller in the semi-documentary mode of The House on 92nd Street and Call Northside 777, the muted explosivity of The Street with No Name is all the more unsettling for being based on an actual FBI case. The presence of that illustrious organization in the midwestern town of Center City does little to ameliorate the obvious implication that, in 1948, violence has become the American way of life. An intensely sullen Mark Stevens (perhaps still "all dead inside" from The Dark Corner) plays an undercover agent cum all-American stool pigeon in an FBI investigation of a vicious organized gang. Richard Widmark, as the gang's fight-promoter leader, with his many and bizarre idiosyncrasies (including the use of a nasal inhaler to ward off the germs inherent in fresh air) here perhaps more than in Kiss of Death is the prototype for Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth in Blue Velvet. Brutal misogyny and a philosophical bent are the trademarks of his menace. Meanwhile, to add to the film's insistent authenticity, minor parts are played by actual feds, and Lloyd Nolan once again appears as the FBI's Inspector Briggs from House on 92nd Street.