What Happened After THE UNTOUCHABLES

Al Capone was nothing compared to what Eliot Ness faced next...

by Ewan Paterson
Untouchables Torso Eliot Ness
Jinxworld / Paramount Pictures

The story of Eliot Ness, the Untouchables and Al Capone is the stuff of legend. Although Ness himself died long before his exploits were mythologised in Hollywood, the lawman turned one time politician boasted one of the most extraordinary careers in US history - even going beyond his time in Chicago.

The subject of a successful TV series in the late fifties and early sixties, Ness' legend was further cemented thanks to 1987's The Untouchables, a big screen crime drama helmed by Brian De Palma, featuring Kevin Costner as Ness, and Sean Connery as a Chicago policeman determined to end Capone's grip on the city.

Both works were adapted from Ness' autobiography of the same name, but his story goes beyond tales of night time liquor raids, police corruption and the eventual trial that landed Capone behind bars. Way beyond.

The ending of De Palma's film ends on a relatively upbeat note for Ness, with the Prohibition agent greeting the news that the Volstead Act will be repealed by saying that he'll "have a drink". But what happened next casts doubt on the film's optimistic climax. For Eliot Ness, things were about to get much, much worse.

This is the story of what happened AFTER The Untouchables.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.