The Killer That Stalked New York

Sheila Bennet (Evelyn Keyes) is hot. She's just arrived from Cuba with some smuggled diamonds and a federal agent is shadowing her. She also has a fever from the small pox she is carrying onto the docks of New York.

With the country presently in the mist of a viral outbreak that has the entire state under quarantine and the country on full alert The Killer that Stalked New York is as pertinent today as it was when it was released in 1950. Based upon an outbreak in Queens that took place in 1947 it is given a felonious back story with a sleazy rogues gallery of marginals making the outbreak that much more slippery to contain.

Similar in theme and topic to the earlier released that year Panic in the Streets, it lacks the polish and form of the Kazan as it takes on a documentary feel at times but it does boast a fine performance from the desperate Keyes while Charles Korvin makes for a loathsome villain.

There must have been a sale on this storyline back in the 40's. An epidemic threatens New York (it's always New York) and nobody takes it seriously. Some might say that Richard Widmark and Jack Palance did it better in Panic in the Streets, but I disagree.

There is always something about these Poverty Row productions that really touch a nerve. The production values are never that polished and the acting is a little rough around the edges, but that is the very reason I think this movie and those like it are effective. Rough, grainy, edgy. And the cast. All 2nd stringers or A list actors past their prime. No egos here. These folks were happy to get the work. Whit Bissell, Carl Benton Reid, Jim Backus, Arthur Space, Charles Korvin, and the melodious voice of Reed Hadley flowing in the background like crude oil. By the way, I've been in the hospital a couple of times; how come my nurses never looked like Dorothy Malone? In these kind of movies they don't bother much with make-up and hair, but they really managed to turn Evelyn Keyes into a hag. Or maybe they just skipped the make-up and hair altogether. Anyway, it was pretty effective. She plays a lovesick jewel smuggler who picks up a case of Small Pox in Cuba while smuggling jewels back for ultra-villain Charles Korvin (who is boffing her sister in the meantime). You got the Customs Agents looking for her because of the jewels, and the Health Department looking for her because she's about to de-populate New York. No 4th Amendment rights here. Everybody gets hassled.

You gotta have the right attitude to enjoy a movie like this. I have a brother who scrutinizes movies to death. If they don't hold up to his Orson Wellian standards, he bombs them unmercifully. They must have the directorial excellence of a David Lean movie, the score of Wolfgang von Korngold, the Sound and Art of Douglas Shearer and Cedric Gibbons respectively. This ain't it.

But I have the right attitude, and if you do as well, you'll love this movie.

This is a really dark movie. Noir indeed. The title character is smallpox, brought into New York City unknowingly by Evelyn Keyes.

She is on one mission when she arrives and on a rougher one after she's spoken to her no longer innocent sister. But she herself is not intentionally a killer. This doesn't mean she doesn't kill. It doesn't mean her presence somewhere among eight million other people doesn't throw the city into turmoil.

Keyes is excellent. The supporting cast is very good too. There are several little-known people involved in this -- the director included. Don't be put off. It is a movie to be reckoned with! (And how nice to see a Columbia picture. Columbia and Republic turned out wonderful comedies and noirs; yet we hardly ever see them anymore.)

Robert Osborne, in introducing this movie to the Turner Classic Movie audience for the first time tonight, says that Columbia had to sit on the movie for about 6 months in order to let the similarly-plotted "Panic in the Streets" play out and leave the theaters. What we have then is a gritty, somewhat newsreel sounding (and looking) film whose narrator walks us through all the ironies of modern urban epidemiology. Worth noting, though, are the few scenes out in the street where the tragic couple lives. There's just enough street noise and confusion to make the scenes as claustrophobic as possible, while still being somehow life-affirming. Otherwise, it's a fine B noir plot with a lot of character and muscle, and cinematography to take off your hat to. Not to mention that hot kid sister -- hubba, hubba!

This film about a woman who returns from Cuba to New York City with both smuggled diamonds and smallpox is a fairly typical film-noirish melodrama of the late 40's/early 50's. Will the police and Health Department officials find her in time to save NYC from an epidemic? The film has all the elements one expects from this type of film: great black and white cinematography, romantic subplots, over-the-top shady characters (one played by Jim Backus, "Mr. Howell" of "Gilligan's Island" fame) and too-good-to-be-true good guys, and great New York locations. It also has a hammy narration and some corny dialogue, but it is a fairly suspenseful and generally fun way to spend 75 minutes.

However, the situation which probably seemed like far-fetched (but plausible) fiction in 1950, seems frighteningly possible today. The anthrax attacks of 2001, the fears of weaponized smallpox being used by terrorists, the concerns about vaccinations and the amount and safety of vaccines, the inability of governmental agencies to work together and share information effectively all come to mind when one watches this film. This gives it a bit more resonance today than other more dated noirish "chase" films of the same era.

Overall, only a pretty good film but definitely worth a watch for the subject matter and its relevance to today's fears about bio-terrorism.