KILLER THAT STALKED NEW YORK, THE (director: Earl McEvoy; screenwriters: Harry Essex/from a Cosmopolitan magazine article "Smallpox: The Killer That Stalked New York" by Milton Lehman; cinematographer: Joseph Biroc; cast: Evelyn Keyes (Sheila Bennet), William Bishop (Dr. Ben Wood), Charles Korvin (Matt Krane), Lola Albright (Francie Bennet), Jim Backus (Willie), Barry Kelley (Johnson,T-Agent), Whit Bissell (Sid Bennet), Ludwig Donath (Dr. Cooper), Roy Roberts (Mayor), Art Smith (Moss, Fence), Walter Burke (Brainy Danny, Bellhop), Beverly Washburn (Welda Kowalski), Celia Lovsky (Kowalski), Peter Virgo (Joe Dominic, Milkman), Harry Shannon (Officer Houlihan), Carl Benton Reid (Commissioner Ellis), 1950)
Review by Dennis Schwartz
There's not much in the way of thrills or surprises in this minor noir film, one that is able to combine a story about diamond smugglers and a smallpox outbreak in the New York City of 1947. It is based on the real threat of a smallpox epidemic for New York City that took place in 1946. The thin story is taken from a Cosmopolitan magazine article by Milton Lehman. It is mildly diverting because of its able depiction of America's cold war paranoia during the early 1950s against anything foreign, as the film shows how an entire city can become terror stricken by something unknown attacking it.
Upon entering New York City's Pennsylvania Station from Cuba, Sheila Bennet (Keyes) senses she is being followed by custom's police. The former singer has teamed up with her good-for-nothing husband, a piano player, Matt Krane (Korvin), to smuggle $50,000 worth of diamonds into the country. To make sure that you know that he is the heavy in the story, he will speak with a foreign accent. Everything foreign in this film is either connected with something sick or with something dangerous to America.
Not going straight home to her husband, whom she calls at the station, but instead going to a hotel on her husband's suggestion, she finds herself feeling ill and anxious to rest up at home. He is two-timing her with her own sister, Francie (Lola), who is seen by the viewer in the apartment when she calls. Sheila excitedly tells him that she mailed the diamonds to him because the cop was following her and will try to lose the tail following her before coming home.
She is able to give the T-agent (Kelley) the slip by having the bellhop (Burke) show her the back way out. Feeling sick, she nearly faints on the street, as a cop takes her to a local clinic. There, she comes into contact with a sweet young girl (Washburn) who is being taken to the hospital for whooping cough. She feels very maternal to her, giving the little girl a pin ornament she was wearing that caught the girl's eye.
Dr. Ben Wood treats her for a cold, giving her a medicine and telling her to go home and get some rest. Later, when he checks on the little girl admitted to the hospital, he is startled to find that she has come down with an illness that has been eradicated from most of the world since the Middle Ages, smallpox.
Meanwhile, after returning home and feeling sick, Sheila becomes aware that Matt has left both her and her sister, but he can't leave town completely because he has to wait ten days before his fence (Smith) will pay him off. He is told the diamonds are too hot to handle.
The city is thrown into a panic, as a few cases of smallpox develop. The city decides to vaccinate everyone, but runs out of the serum, causing a panic in the city. Coming into contact with Sheila and taking sick with smallpox: are the train porter, Sheila's milk deliveryman, and her nightclub boss Willie (Backus). The T-agent and Dr. Wood, who is in charge of finding the smallpox carrier, realize that they are looking for the same person and through a lead from Willie, trace her to her brother's flophouse in the Bowery. But she escapes from them there and goes to Dr. Wood's office requesting more of the medicine he gave her. When he wants her to turn herself in, she shoots him in the shoulder and escapes.
Sheila manages to stay alive because she has to kill Matt and settle the score she has with him. This, supposedly, keeps her going, while the one's she gave the disease to are dropping like flies, including the little girl.
In the final scene, she waits for Matt in the fence's place and forces him out on the ledge of the high-rise office building, where he looses his balance and falls to the pavement. This seems to exact the same punishment for him that he exacted from Francie, who committed suicide when he left her and her sister confronted her that she knew about the affair with her husband. Dr. Wood, who seems to be omniscient, appears on the ledge to rescue Sheila and he gets all the information he needs on how and where she got the disease and all the people she was in contact with, before she dies.
The action part of the melodramatic story was weakly told, while the noir characterizations of Sheila did capture the desperate feelings of the subject, but it was not enough to overcome the overall inability of the story to have a heart to it. The city officials and Dr. Wood running around the city to stem the epidemic, seemed hard to fathom. The mechanical acting by everyone, except for Keyes, and the unconvincing action scenes made the film appear as the B film it was, despite the great noir camerawork of Joseph Biroc, who caught how dark the city could be for someone on-the-run.
REVIEWED ON 1/14/2000 GRADE: C
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
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