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Film and camera technology developed during World War Two paved the way for easy, inexpensive location shooting. So, in the late 40s, movies -- in particular, low-budget B-pictures -- started to break away from studio-built sets and to shoot on the mean streets of American cities. These changes also freed production from cumbersome studio systems and put the means of moviemaking into the hands of small, independent producers.

The Tattooed Stranger is a starvation-budget police procedural about the murder of an unknown victim; its cast and crew are all unknowns as well. A woman's body turns up in Central Park; later, in the morgue, police shoot a skid-row veteran hired to carve an identifying tattoo from her corpse. They have to find out first who she was, then who killed her. Their investigation takes them from brownfields in the Bronx to the bars and beaneries of Brooklyn and the Bowery.

This is the ratty old New York, before Robert Moses cleaned everything up by tearing everything down. The characters who inhabit firetrap tenements and patronize grungy tattoo parlors look like shell-shocked urban survivors, not slumming bit-players. The story, sweetened up slightly by a love interest of little interest, gets told flatly, with few frills. The Tattooed Stranger affords a brief, quasi-documentary glimpse into a squalid underside without benefit of sentiment or prettification.

This police procedural is no worse than many others of its era and better than quite a few. Obviously it is following in the steps of "Dragnet" and "Naked City" but emerges as an enjoyable programmer. The best thing about it is the unadorned look it provides into a world now long gone...the lower class New York of the late 40's/early 50's. Here it is in all its seedy glory, from the old-school tattoo parlors to the cheap hotels to the greasy spoons. These old police films are like travelogues to a bygone era and very bittersweet to anybody who dislikes the sanitized, soulless cityscape of today.

Also intriguing is the emphasis on the nuts-and-bolts scientific aspect of solving the crime...in this case, the murder of a tattooed woman found in an abandoned car. Our main heroes, Detectives Tobin and Corrigan, do the footwork, but without the tedious and painstaking efforts of the "lab boys", they'd get nowhere. Although the technology is not in the same league, the cops here use the dogged persistence of a C.S.I. investigator to track down their man.

The way some reviewers have written about this movie, you think it would have been directed by Ed Wood and acted by extras from his movies. What bosh! I enjoyed John Miles as the gangly ex-Marine turned cop Tobin...he had a happy-go-lucky, easy-going approach to the role that's a welcome change from the usual stone-faced histrionics of most movie cops of the period. Patricia Barry is cute and delightful as his perky girlfriend who helps solve the crime. Walter Kinsella is stuffy and droll as the older detective Corrigan. I rather liked the chemistry of these two and it made for something a bit different than the sort of robotic "Dragnet" approach.

The mystery itself is not too deep and the final chase and shoot-out certainly won't rank amongst the classics of crime cinema, but during it's brief running time, "The Tattooed Stranger" more than held my interest.

I picked up on this movie on a dull afternoon. I was intrigued by the title and didn't realize I'd seen it before. I'm glad I took another look.

I glanced at some of the reviews and, for the life of me, I can't understand why this movie was almost universally panned. It's not Detective Story, or The Naked City, and it was never meant to be. This is a little forgotten gem, rescued from obscurity by TCM. We get to see the cops processing evidence using methods that today seem primitive. The lab scenes take us back to pre-DNA days. It reminds us of a time when the police used logic instead of computers to work out a solution.

I admit that the acting is less than outstanding, but gee what atmosphere. The lunch wagons, the shoe repair shops, the tattoo parlors, and the seedier side of life in Brooklyn when it was still interesting.

My advice to some of my more critical friends would be: don't try to make a silk purse out of sow's ear. It is what it is.

Note: The part of Johnny Marseilles, the tatoo artist, was played by Arthur Jarrett who was a famous tenor in the 30's and 40's. He once sang with some of the famous early bands such as Ted Weems. You can see him in his prime as the singer in another TCM classic called Dancing Lady, with Joan Crawford.

I caught this on TCM this morning, and I must agree with many of the previous comments about the colorless actors and the lackluster script. I watched the movie with a friend, and part of the enjoyment of watching it was finding unintentional humor in the film. However, as also mentioned in many other comments, the shots of Manhattan, the Bowery, the Bronx and other areas of New York were fabulous, both interiors and exteriors, and wow, what a gorgeous black & white print! And we did find the detective work in it to be of interest --identifying the grass in the dead woman's car, tracking down the tattoo artist who in turn was able to identify the work of another artist, etc. I don't agree with other reviewers who deem the film "worthless"; the outstanding cinematography alone makes it worth one viewing, and it was fun to see Patricia Barry (White) cast as a botanist, and a young Jack Lord in a non-speaking role in one of the group scenes. I think that with just a little more display of emotion from the actors, and/or a better script, this could've been a really good movie.

No familiar names at all to movie fans appear in The Tattooed Stranger as this New York based film was shot there with players who more or less made Broadway their beat.

A woman is found dead stripped of all her identity and all they had to go on was a couple of tattoos side by side done at different times.

Forensic detective John Miles is teamed up with beat cop Walter Kinsella to solve this crime, but first they have to find out who before why.. Patricia Barry consulting botanist is on the hunt as well.

The deceased I will say had quite a racket going on and there is someone not happy with it or her.

Nicely done like a CSI episode.

Its not sophisticated, and nobody in the credits had a great career, but taken as a whole, because there are no famous personalities; the film seems more realistic than some high budget, well cast films.

A film made for a few bucks, that is worthy of watching should give hope to all those would be film makers and wantabee actors.

The problem with this film is it was made in the worst possible time. TV was taking over the revenues of the film industry, and this film could have easily been shown on TV. In 1950, all the fare on TV would qualify for a "G" rating. The film industry began to make more "adult" films that could not be shown on TV during the days when TV wouldn't dare show the sex and skin of today's commercials.

A short, low budget production.

Most of the acting was a bit wooden,but the dialog had it's moments. A police procedural much like the first half of a "Law and Order" episode. NO hunches or lucky coincidences, just good old-fashioned police work - both forensics and leg work solves the case. A well-structured chain of evidence leads detectives to their murder suspect.

Watch for brief appearances of a very young Jack Lord as a police lab assistant.

All-in-all a pretty good movie.

Very low-budget police procedural film about homicide detectives trying to solve the murder of a woman whose body turns up in a stolen car in Central Park, and their only clue is a tattoo on her arm. Although released by RKO, this has the look of an independent production that was picked up by the studio for distribution. The cast and crew, with a few exceptions--among them a young and uncredited Jack Lord, director Edward Montagne and cameraman William Steiner--are comprised of complete unknowns, and it shows. The performances are universally sub-par and wouldn't pass muster in a high school training film, the direction is stodgy and choppy and, as mentioned previously, there's no chemistry whatsoever between the lead actors. However, despite the film's many shortcomings, it does have a few good points. The location shooting in New York City, and the film's ultra-low budget, gives it a gritty authenticity much like that of the far superior "The Naked City", a shootout in a dark basement is decently handled, and some of the investigating procedures are clever. Otherwise, it's not much to write home about. It is worth a look, however, for a glimpse at the seamier sections of New York City in the early 1950s, and old-car buffs will be ecstatic to see the legions of '30s and '40s cars in the streets.

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Director Edward Montagne does in a little more than one hour what other, more expensive and hyped films fail to do. Mr. Montagne shows us a police story written by Phillip H. Reisman Jr. that while, is not one of the best of the genre, it keeps the viewer involved in all that's going on.

This is clearly a B type movie. In fact, the best thing going for "The Tattooed Stranger" is the opportunity to take a peek at the way New York looked in those years. The crystal clear cinematography by William O. Steiner, either has been kept that way through the years, or has been lovingly restored.

There are great views of New York in the opening sequence. Later we are taken to Brooklyn to the Dumbo section and later on the film travels to the Bronx and the Gun Hill Road area with its many monument stores in the area.

John Miles and Walter Kinsella made a great detective team. Patricia Barry is perfect as the plant expert from the Museum of Natural History. Jack Lord, who went to bigger things in his career, is seen in a non speaking role.

It was great fun to watch a city, as it was, because it doesn't exist any more.

This is a great B film from the 1950's, because it deals with forensics just like the present day CSI Series TV shows. The police take it step by step in the laboratory and look at all the evidence with a fine toothed comb! Howard Hughes produced this film for only $124,000 and most of the filming was done in NYC, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, Queens. John Miles,(Detective Frank Tobin),"Gunfighters",'47 was a ex-marine who was able to get a college education and met up with a gal named Patricia Barry,(Patricia White),"Dear Heart",'64, who was able to assist Frank Tobin in his investigation into a young woman who had a Tattoo and was found in Central Park. If you really like B&W Classic B Films, this is a very worth while to just sit back and enjoy from beginning to END!

I watched this the day after NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH (1948) because it has a similar reputation for seediness; the result, however, is even more modest and, frankly, negligible (while included among the 250 Quintessential Noirs, several titles that did not make the list were obviously more deserving of a place). Though RKO made some of the best noirs, this is a cut-rate production with a totally unfamiliar cast and crew!

The title could allude to either the female victim (a bigamist for the purposes of insurance fraud) or her murderer (who, however, remains a cipher to the very end, thus ineffective). The protagonists are a seasoned cop and his rookie partner which, typically, emerges a bumpy but ultimately mutually affectionate partnership; also on hand is an attractive female botanist who obviously catches the young man's attention. Incidentally, the film's most noteworthy elements – apart from adopting hilarious nick-names such as "Billy Alcohol" and "The Electric Rembrandt" for its more colorful characters! – are the rarity (for this time in American cinema) of watching a meticulous scene-of-the crime investigation, as well as tattoo-painting and gravestone-carving!

Although a grade B movie with the cast seldom seen elsewhere, this movie packs a punch. First it has good dialogue with a lot of quirky, almost hidden, humor. Best of all it gives the viewer a look at the seedy side of New York City in the early post-WWII era. The police methods may be dated but they are still of historical interest. It's also a good sociological perspective of the period and shows the viewer how times have changed, especially concerning the "art" of tattooing. It is also fast paced and though there's nothing new in the plotting, the story holds the viewer's interest. The acting may not be top notch, but it's also not Joe Namath. Forget its grade B status and just enjoy.

A man walking his dog finds a dead female body behind the wheels of a car in Central Park. The police detectives use all the technical tools to investigate the case. Knife wielding vagrant Billy Alcohol attacks the morgue and is shot dead. Somebody had paid him in half bills presumably with the other halves as final payment. She has a Marine Corp tattoo which Billy was probably trying to cut out. Lead detective Tobin seeks help from botany scientist Dr. Mary Mahan.

RKO Pathe was the documentary arm of the studio doing theatrical shorts. With their doc skills and Broadway actors, they are trying to follow the style of The Naked City. It has authentic procedures and cityscapes. On the other hand, it has few thrills, limited non-doc directing skills, and flat intensity. It's great for bits of old New York. It's a solid B-movie.

More a police procedural than a film noir (it was presented this past week on Noir Alley) from 1949. Starring a bunch of unknowns (even though I thought I saw Jack Lord in one scene), this early CSI: NY episode (it runs a little over an hour) concerns a tattooed woman found murdered in a car in a park. Using rigorous investigative techniques (tame by our standards), a pair of detectives (a newbie & an old hat in the game) track down the murderer by doing the usual; collecting evidence, interviewing suspects & formulating a theory behind the crime. Made by a documentary film crew (they'd provide news shorts which would run in front of main attractions) on actual New York locations, this film is a lesson in economy rather than novelty but seeing the seeds of what we now know as commonplace still is a treat.

A Central Park patron finds a murdered woman in an abandoned car in the park. The chief assigns a grizzled veteran and a rookie, who has just been called up from the police lab, to head the case.

The woman is a Jane Doe and with limited information it looks like an uphill battle. The one clue they have is the woman's tattoo. That is until a criminal for hire is sent to remove the tattoo from her dead body. Luckily the crime lab took a photo before she was butchered.

This leads our two detectives to the Electric Rembrandt at his tattoo parlor and a botanist who might be a steadying influence, but who joins our young detective on the search for red goat grass!

The two nickname Jane Doe Tattoo Tilly and other than the tattoo, all they have to go on is she has fallen arches and cheap ink on her thumb and index finger like you would find on a menu from a burger joint...so maybe she was a waitress? And the tattoo was on her hand and resembled the U. S. Marines emblem with the anchor and the globe.

So many great lines in this noir-ish low-budget police detective film.

"He's trying to get the murder car into a test tube."

"Sober he can't think, drunk he can't talk. He couldn't identify himself in a mirror."

"I know a daisy from a dandelion, but I'm not a Botanist."

"No artist likes to think of his works buried."

"The Electric Rembrandt had a short circuit."

"In the laboratory we don't think anything. That's your job. We just try to back it up with science!" (My favorite as a career laboratory employee!)

"Alright fauna, flora is waiting."

"I'm a botanist not a prospector!"

"Take perpetual care of yourself."-to the headstone director

Short and sweet, this was a fun little film. Definitely noir-light, but still worth a watch.

Edward Montagne's Tattooed Stranger is supposed to play like a crime thriller with a little film noir mixed in for flavor. Instead, it's a poorly acted, witless look into low budget and uninspired film making. The plot is absurd and the acting excruciatingly stiff and amateurish. John Miles, who had a rather thin resume in the industry, grins and guffaws throughout, and everyone else acts with the same verve as characters in a government-made filmstrip about driver safety. The movie anticipates shows like 'Leave it to Beaver' and 'Father Knows Best' in its unnaturally wholesome view of New York in 1950. Why, the viewer doesn't even get to see anyone light up a cig until some shapely woman is interviewed in a flophouse halfway through the movie. The only thing the movie has going for it (besides its brevity) is the excellent location shots coordinated by William Steiner. The low budget of the film works in the cinematographer's favor, as the viewer is treated to well-framed shots of New York City's interiors and expansive exteriors. Unless you wish to enjoy the film for the choice of settings and camera angles, I suggest watching practically any other movie.

A gritty little film noir, the Tattooed Stranger has dramatic tension thanks to the excellent and original music of Alan Shulman.

Shulman, a cellist in Toscanini's NBC Symphony, studied composition with Paul Hindemith. His Cello Concerto was premiered by Leonard Rose with the New York Philharmonic, his clarinet pieces were played and recorded by Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, he wrote songs for Steve Allen, and he taught Nelson Riddle orchestration techniques used in Riddle's work for Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald. and Nat "King" Cole.

His quality music is unexpected in this context and gives the film depth and nuance.

Two big kicks to be had out of "The Tattooed Stranger" for this viewer - spotting Patricia Barry, even though back then, she had another name and different colored hair; and seeing Jack Lord in an uncredited role. When those are the big whoops, you've got a problem.

This is a B movie that concentrates on routine police work to uncover the identity of a woman's dead body found in Central Park and later, her killer. Bette Davis once said, "Real drama is larger than life." How right she was. This film is life in all of its step-by-step boredom. By the time there's anything to get excited about, it's too late.

The cast is pretty blah, but the police detectives manage to show the camaraderie that people working together have, so the director had some idea of what he was doing. The script mentions and shows some New York locations and even shows two officers going into the 8th Avenue subway. Having lived in New York, that was fun.

Today we have reality TV where the "real people" are a lot looser than these actors who were trying to be real. Very so-so.

This was last week's entry of "Noir Alley" on Turner Classic Movies. Without host Eddie Muller's detailed wrap around comments, I might have given it a six. But his comments on what is bad about this film as well as about what is good about it raised my rating to a seven.

The producer was given only 125K with which to make this little crime film. The title comes from the victim - a girl is found in the passenger seat of a stolen car left in Central Park with her face blasted off. Her only identifying mark is a tattoo that indicates either she or a significant other was in the Navy. The police are shown going through their crime scene investigation, as it existed in 1950 - dusting for prints, taking photos, etc. The girl has never been fingerprinted, so they don't know who the victim is, much less anything about suspects. They find some samples of grass in the car that did not come from the park, and the medical examiner says the girl's arches have almost completely given way, which indicates she may have spent lots of time standing. Her fingers are stained with cheap purple ink which is often used on menus. So perhaps the girl is a waitress. And from this the detectives have to find not only who the killer is, but who is this victim.

So what is good or interesting about this film? The cast is almost completely anonymous in the world of feature films. For many it was the only feature film role that they ever had. However, many of the cast had lengthy careers on television, and this film feels like an episode of whodunnit TV 50s or 60s style, so that is no surprise. Also, the film was shot on location in New York City, so it is "practically a travelogue of mid century New York", to quote Eddie. You see the beaneries, the boarding houses, and the Bowery as they existed in 1950, when New York was home to lots of working class people and not a tony address affordable to just a few.

What is bad about it? I'd say the rather contrived romance between a botanist, brought in to identify the unique foliage found in the stolen car, and the "college boy" detective, as his partner keeps calling him. When you first meet the botanist she is in a lab coat and glasses, suitable for her profession. But after that, in spite of the fact that she is wading through high grass in empty lots, she has on pumps, some stylish dress, and is awkwardly carrying a purse! Plus background music that sounds like it is from "Leave it To Beaver" plays as opposed to the more "Dragnet" style score that accompanies the rest of the film. It is all so nauseatingly endearing.

What is funny about this film? Originally the script called for the girl's face - which you never see - to be blown off by a sawed off shotgun. But the censors objected and the weapon had to be changed, only because it was illegal to modify a shotgun in such a way. Like murder was not illegal? Head censor Joe Breen's warped logic just slays me.

"The Tattooed Stranger" is a sub-B quickie with the saving grace of being shot on the streets of post-war New York.

The cinematography is very good. Unfortunately the script and acting is not. The acting seldom rises above the level that one would find in an Ed Wood movie. Ditto for the dialog.

But the film's pacing is very good (as it would have to be to squeeze in the story in its brief running time) and the shots of New York City make the whole film worthwhile.

Look quick to spot Jack Lord in the 1st reel, then later on speaking a few lines toward the end.

Take off a star if you aren't a NYC buff.