El mutilador de rostros

There's a guy going around attacking women late at night, slashing their faces and their handbags. Police psychiatrist Kent Smith catches the case.

It's based on an Evan Hunter novel, his second 87th Precinct novel writen under his Ed McBain pen name. It's a slow procedural, but Kent Smith's calm presence and the expanding circle of characters and the suddenness of the clue revealing whodunnit make it less than a perfect mystery. Still, the shooting in actual New York City locations makes it worthwhile, as does the cast, including Dick O'Neill, James Franciscus, and Renee Taylor.

William Berke's last directorial effort is obviously a cheap affair, and half the characters sound like they've taken elocution lessons from Sheldon Leonard, but there are visual sparks in the movie, particularly the sequence that starts in a Turkish bath and ends with Smith and suspect Arthur Storch running from a crap game. Berke's career wasn't going anywhere in particular when he died at the age of 55 the year of this release. He'd started out in B westerns, and had never gotten an A budget in a quarter of a century, but he liked to give the audience some value for money.

Police psychiatrist Kent Smith is an easy-going, amiable guy, ready to take time from his pursuit of a sunglassed mugger to act as unofficial therapist to easy-going, amiable hack driver James Franciscus (whose wife's sister, living with them, has become withdrawn and hostile). But the mugger has struck 11 times in eight weeks, grabbing women's purses and leaving a superficial knife scar along their jawlines. With the help of his fiancée, policewoman Nan Martin, Kent follows up a number of leads, all of them dead ends. Then the mugger strikes once more, but this time leaves his victim dead - Franciscus' sister-in-law, whom an autopsy reveals to have been three months pregnant....

Part of the pleasure of Ed McBain's seemingly endless series of police procedurals set in the 87th Precinct is that he takes the bizarre and the pathological and makes them mundane - part of the warp and weft of living in a city. The second of his novels to be filmed, The Mugger leeches much of the familiarity away; it ill-advisedly dispenses with the quirky cops of the 87th to center on Smith, a character so four-square that McBain would never have written him.

And though his books may seem garrulous and absent-minded, underneath the disgressions clockwork plots tick away. But in The Mugger, the red herrings really stink. Few adaptations of McBain's series, for the movies or for television, have been quite successful in fidelity to the author's nameless city and the cops who police it, but The Mugger must count among the weakest of them - an inferior follow-up to the same year's Cop Hater.

The Mugger (1958)

A weak and low budget flick, but with some genuine looks at the era that a slicker movie wouldn't reveal. In fact, Hollywood is often gauged at having reached its true nadir around 1958, so an honest movie with all kind of flaws has a leg up on the competition.

The story is simple. A mugger has been successful snatching purses from pretty young women in this very small town for some 10 or 11 muggings. And every time he bothers to leave his trademark--a slash with a knife on the woman's face. We naturally hear the testimony from a few of these women, and the acting varies wonderfully (from mediocre to middling, but in many different ways).

Chief investigator, in a twist, is a police psychiatrist. This is the best actor of the bunch, Kent Smith. He played key roles in two classic horror films more than a decade earlier, in "Cat People" and as a doctor in "Spiral Staircase." He's great in those, and in this one too, despite the surrounding cast. As a shrink he's asked to create a profile of the mugger, and decides on some interesting details, including that the man is tormented and when he is caught he's going to be relieved. You'll see if that's true.

Meanwhile some small town details come through, and it's fun to watch even as you wait for some better drama to develop. The muggings themselves even seem a bit routine to watch. One of them is a

The photography is vivid throughout. There is a smattering of dramatic scenes--gambling with a violent end, a steamy sauna scene, a diner scenario with a dizzy blonde, a big dance hall bash, and so on. It's never dull on that level. And Smith is in most of the movie, holding it up. There are a couple of subplots--other crime matters, a young girl who's too shy to meet a boy, that kind of thing. More curious than gripping, but good stuff for the details.

The city is an unknown, and is usually suggested as a medium to small city place. This makes it weird that so many women are walking alone down dark streets when a known mugger is on the loose. But by the end of the movie we are taken up specifically to 236th Street at the D Train stop. Seems like the Bronx to me (that location has been renamed Tim Hendrick Place, if I'm right about this). Anyway, the locations don't quite jive with the small town feel of the rest of it. The final scene is at a ferry dock going to New Jersey, and I think it's a midtown ferry to Weehawken. There were never ferries from the Bronx to New Jersey (mostly because that part of New Jersey is the Palisades park and cliffs), so the final cab ride must take them down the Hudson somewhere (even though the cab seems to be driving north).

Anyway, you can see how the minutia meant more than the overall plot. I enjoyed it despite everything.

"The Mugger" is a low-budget sleeper of a cop film from the late 1950s--the tail end of the American film-noir era. While the film doesn't have any major stars, the story is VERY modern for 1958 and might surprise you. Plus, it's a dandy little story about police profilers and a nasty case that's got everyone stumped.

Kent Smith was a very reliable actor who mostly was a supporting actor and star in Bs. In this film, he plays the lead, a police psychiatrist that's been called in to deal with a strange series of attacks. They involve women who were mugged and then slashed on the left side of the face--not a deep slash, but serious nevertheless. His job is to help determine what sort of guy would do this--the profile of what they should be looking for in the case. The story is compact, very interesting, takes a few nice detours to throw the audience off the scent and gets even more interesting when there is a murder. I'd say more but I don't want to give away the plot.

There were many good reasons I enjoyed the film--most of which boil down to dandy writing. The dialog was very snappy, there were some funny little touches (such as the blonde victim who REALLY liked Smith) and the film's not beating around the bush too much in discussing crime. You'll hear words like 'rape' and 'sexual attack' in the film and there is also a bit about a pregnant woman--stuff that the more permissive 50s films STILL rarely ever discussed but which made the movie much more realistic. I also enjoyed some of the supporting players--such as the way the policewoman handled herself in the park. Well worth seeing and a nice opportunity for Smith to show he was a very good actor with a likable style. The only negative at all I noticed was the confrontation scene at the end--who would confront a killer while the killer is driving the car?! Talk about a recipe for disaster! Oh, and the best line in the film: "Is he a friend of yours? He's in little pieces now".

Less noir and more procedural crime caper. This one puts a consulting psychiatrist in charge of profiling and leading the investigation of a serial mugger who is terrorizing women and slashing their face. Those who remember Quincy MD will remember why these were compelling stories told from another angle. Deserves a better reputation.