Mensajera de la muerte

I caught this movie late at night on the Encore Mystery Channel. There was never a dull moment. The plot was plausible, the acting very good, and the photography great! I find it "amazing" how the scripts and dialogues were so often more intelligible back in the "good old days" of movies. There was not the incessant obscene and crude language that pervades most of today's films. The pacing was right on and the ending suspenseful. I only wish I could purchase it. Oh, by the way, am I the only one bored by the never ending credits? They seem almost as long as the movie. Does anyone, besides mommy or daddy, really care who the movie's caterer or grip was? With the above out of my system, if you get the chance, see this flick. It is a winner.

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!

In this crackerjack noir thriller from Columbia which is a combination of Panic In The Streets and The Naked City, Evelyn Keyes is unknowingly The Killer That Stalked New York. Evelyn who smuggled some stolen jewels into the country from Cuba also smuggled in smallpox. It gets misdiagnosed by doctor William Bishop and when they do find out what it is the hunt is on for her.

For most of the film the Treasury Department is also hunting Keyes, but for the smuggled jewels. It's not until nearly the end of the film that the health department and law enforcement realize they're looking for the same woman.

Evelyn's on a mission also. Her husband Charles Korvin has left her flat, the unkindest cut of all being that he was fooling around with her sister while she was in Cuba collecting the gems and contracting smallpox. When Lola Albright as her sister commits suicide over the whole affair, Evelyn's on a mission, get Korvin or die trying. And that's not an idle threat given the situation.

The film was mostly shot in New York like The Naked City and its cast is sprinkled liberally with a lot of familiar names and faces. Keep an eye out for good performances by Connie Gilchrist as Evelyn's unsympathetic landlady, Jim Backus as a shifty club owner, and Art Smith as Korvin's fence.

A real sleeper in the noir category, don't miss it if broadcast.

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.