User Reviews

A strong episode, a no-holds-barred extortion story with trigger-happy thugs who take advantage of refugees in Chicago, taking a part of their paychecks for "protection."

One Hungarian violinist balks, and they beat him up and put him in the hospital with a hand injury. Frank and the boys find out about this and decide they are going to help this guy and the other refugees who are being strong-armed. Somehow, this case really hits "Det. Frank Ballinger" (Lee Marvin) and you don't want to get Frank mad!

Frank winds up doing what he likes to do - go undercover. He pretends to be a refugee and waits for the goons to try to take his money.

It's a good episode, especially the second half of it which also features an actress who had a very pretty face: Judith Braun, who plays "Bettina Sandor."

****SPOILERS*** A really mad and pi**ed off Let. Det. Frank Ballinger, Lee Marvin, goes above and beyond the call of duty as a Chicago cop in taking on this extortion racket run by mob boss Joe Maloney, Ben Morris. It's Maloney's goons who've been shaking down the city's newly arrived from Communist slavery Hungarian refugees who came to the USA to find a better life only to find what they escaped from in Hungary. A bunch of KGB like goons making their life in America a living hell.

Going undercover at the local farmers market as a loader, of trucks, Ballinger is approached by one of Maloney's goons and shakedown artists Artie Nevins, Don Nagel, and told to pay protection money or else he'll end up with a cracked skull, and with no medical insurance, in the hospital. It was the brutish Nevins who earlier broke the hand of fiddle player Josef Sandor, Mark Neuman, who plays his music for customers at the Hungarian Papa Tokar Hungarian Restaurant for not kicking back to him or his boss Maloney $20 a week, which is $150.00 in 2014 greenbacks, for protection money!

***SPOILERS*** At first playing along with Nevins just to get the goods on his boss Joe Maloney Ballinger soon turns violent in almost putting both Nevins and his partner or strong arm man Switch, Rush Williams, in the hospital when they later try to put the squeeze on him! Kidnapped and brought to Maloney's place to be additionally worked over it's discovered by a shocked Maloney, who did dealings with Ballinger before, that he's a cop! Being too stupid to realize that Ballinger who actually told him that help, a police squad, is on the way Maloney orders his boys, or goons, to do Ballinger in only to get done in himself by judo/karate expert Ballinger even before the cop broke into his hideout!