Target: The Corruptors (TV Series) Journey Into Mourning (1962) User Reviews

Quite a disturbing episode.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 8/10 · 17 July 2023]

Claude Ivy promises desperate people $15 a day for picking crops, 900 miles away, the job isn't exactly what it seems to be, with appalling conditions, and a fraction of the promised pay.

I know this goes all the way back to 1962, but the significance and impact are still there, it still feels so very relevant in today's world.

At times this actually made me feel pretty uncomfortable, you really do get to feel the misery of the migrant workers, it succinctly brings to life the horrors people are willing to undergo, when they're desperate, and have nothing.

Very well produced, it has a definite visual authenticity, you feel like you're there amongst them.

It makes a nice change to see The Press being used as a force for good, that makes a change, we could so with even a single journalist like Paul Marino.

Keenan Wynn was spot on as Ivy, I thought he absolutely nailed it as the callous corruptor, there wasn't a single person he wasn't prepared to take advantage of in order to make a quick buck.

8/10.

Journey Into Mourning

[Prismark10 · 6/10 · 11 July 2023]

Paul Marino sets out to expose those who hire and exploit migrant workers.

The likes of Claude Ivy (Keenan Wynn) who promise farm workers $15 a day. Good housing and good food in exchange of hard work.

He makes deals with farmers with each party complaining they will not make a profit from the deal.

It is the poor suckers, the workers who will suffer. Pay is less than $5 a day, the food lousy, housing conditions dire. There is no way out. If you complain, Ivy demands the money for board, lodging and transportation.

Jack Flood is there undercover posing as a farm worker. When Ivy suspects there is a snitch. Billy Joe (Warren Oates) is beaten to death.

Hard hitting and still relevant. Unusually Jack Flood loses it in this story when he realises that he might have indirectly been involved in someone else's death. By doing so he blows his own cover.

Poverty corruptors

[searchanddestroy-1 · 13 July 2015]

This kind of topic could easily have been made thirty years earlier, deep in the world wide depression, when millions of Americans struggled to survive and migrated in that purpose. Here, you see hundreds of poor people, families with children, try to find any work, even the ugliest. Poor naive people who of course become dreamed prey for all kinds of crooks, scoundrels, racketeers and swindlers. You may think here of John Ford's GRAPES OF WRATH. A social story, more than a crime one. Beware for the young Warren Oates's performance, several years earlier than his Sam Peckinpah's contributing; and also don't miss Keenan Wynn as the evil guy. The scene where he brutalizes Royal Dano is absolutely terrific. We watch in this tale the disgusting behaviour of ruthless men discussing business and big dol on the misfortune of those poor migrant farm workers to whom they suck theblood off. Perfectly handled by Bill Conrad as directing.