The Tattooed Stranger

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.

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.

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.

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.