MYSTERY STREET

Ricardo Montalban

MYSTERY STREET (1950). Director: John Sturges. 

A blackmailer named Vivian (Jan Sterling), who lives in a shady boarding house, winds up on the wrong end of a bullet. Some time later Lt. Morales (Ricardo Montalban) of the Barnstable, Cape Cod police force is called in when a skeleton is found on a beach. With the help of forensics and some dogged police work, as well as interviews with those who knew Vivian, Morales is able to zero in on the killer. Morales' chief suspect is Henry Shanway (Marshall Thompson of Cult of the Cobra), a married man who made the drunken mistake of driving off with Vivian that night, while Mrs. Smerrling (Elsa Lanchester), the landlady of the boarding house, is playing a dangerous game of blackmail that could make her the next victim. 

Elsa Lanchester and Edmon Ryan

Mystery Street deals with forensic science much, more more than the average murder mystery of the period, which is one of its strengths. There are also some fine performances from Montalban, Lanchester, Thompson, Sterling, Bruce Bennett as a Harvard professor that Morales consults with, and Sally Forrest as Thompson's wife. Forrest has a particularly good scene talking obliquely about the death of her child in the hospital. There is also nice work from Betsy Blair as a woman who lived in the same boarding house as the victim, and Edmon Ryan as a ship builder who is another suspect. Walter Burke and King Donovan have smaller roles and are fine.

Sally Forrest and Marshall Thompson

Mystery Street has some flaws, however. There is not nearly enough music, which would have strengthened key sequences. Certain actions of the main suspect should have strongly intimated that he wasn't the murderer if Lt. Morales, who seems quite smart, was using his head. And the scene when Morales walks in on Shanway just a second after the latter happens to see the victim's photo in the newspaper is coincidence carried a bit too far. John Alton's moody photography is an asset, though. Leading man Montalban always played with a borderline cocky assurance that gives his thesping a certain flavorful aspect -- this film is no exception in that regard.

Verdict: Good crime thriller with some very good performances. ***. 

THE SCARF

Mercedes McCambridge and John Ireland

THE SCARF  (1951). Written and directed by E. A. Dupont. 

John Barrington (John Ireland of Railroaded) was convicted of strangling a woman with a scarf, but has no memory of it. Sentenced to life in an institution, he manages to escape and winds up on a turkey farm with a grizzled old-timer named Ezra (James Barton). John gives a lift to a somewhat hard-boiled lady named Connie (Mercedes McCambridge). Like Ezra, Connie learns the truth about John but doesn't turn him in, not even for the $5000 reward. John goes to see his old friend, Dr. David Dunbar (Emlyn Williams), who tells him he actually witnessed the murder and knows that John committed it. But is this the truth? Then John's father (Basil Ruysdael) comes into the office with the police in tow ...

James Barton

Frankly, I didn't believe The Scarf for a minute. A lot of good actors are trapped within a screenplay that is half-baked and ludicrous. You can see the denouement coming from a mile away, and the characters seem to exist for only the amount of time they are on-screen -- despite the good acting they never quite seem like real people. Ireland and McCambridge, who were also in All the King's Men together, do the best they can but Broadway star Barton and Williams -- author of Night Must Fall and The Corn is Green in addition to being an actor -- make the best impression. There is also some good work from Lloyd Gough as another psychiatrist, David Bauer/Wolfe as bar owner Louie, and Iris Adrian as a drunken floozy. King Donovan [The Magnetic Monster] is the piano player in the gin joint where Connie works and sings (McCambridge betrays a not-bad voice). Lyle Talbot [Batman and Robin] gives a dull performance as a cop. The music and photography are good but not enough to make this memorable.

Verdict: Flavorful performances, but you won't believe a minute of it! **.

THE MAGNETIC MONSTER

THE MAGNETIC MONSTER (1953). Director: Curt Siodmak. Produced and co-written by Siodmak and Ivan Tors. 

Dr. Jeffrey Stewart (Richard Carlson) is an "A-Man" or investigator for the Office of Scientific Investigation (OSI). He and his partner Dan Forbes (King Donovan of Invasion of the Body Snatchers) are called in when a store owner (Byron Foulger) complains about weird magnetic disturbances terrifying his salespeople. The magnetic disruption is traced to an office upstairs where a dead man is found. Stewart discovers that scientist Harold Decker (Leonard Mudie) has somehow created a strange new element that needs massive amounts of electricity to keep it from imploding, causing mass destruction. Stewart manages to get the element from a dying Decker and off of an airplane before it can cause it to crash, but just when he thinks the danger is over there is a disaster at the facility where it is being stored. Growing in size (although never to gigantic proportions) the element will implode every eleven hours, eventually changing the earth's very orbit and boiling away the seas. Can anything destroy this "monster" before it destroys the world? 

The Magnetic Monster may not have giant spiders munching on mankind but it's horrifying enough in its own way, adeptly building up tension and suspense until the final nail-biting moments in a cyclotron deep in a mineshaft. Richard Carlson is the perfect lead for this kind of picture, radiating efficiency and concern in equal measure, and he gets good support from Donovan and Jean Byron as his wife. Others in the cast include Michael Fox as Dr. Semy, who consults with Stewart, and Kathleen Freeman, of all people, as a switchboard operator at the OSI. Billy Benedict of Blonde Dynamite is amusing, as usual, as one of the salesclerks in Foulger's store, and Foulger himself always strikes the right note. Siodmak directs at a swift pace. He was also responsible, unfortunately, for Bride of the Gorilla. 

Verdict: Surprisingly creepy and absorbing, and not a dull moment. ***1/4. 

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956)

Dana Wynter and Kevin McCarthy

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956). Director: Don Siegel. 

In the small town of Santa Mira, the recently divorced Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) rekindles a romance with the also recently divorced Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter). However, their relationship has to take a back seat when there seems to be an epidemic of people insisting that their loved ones are not their loved ones. Miles believes this may be a form of mass hysteria, until his friends Jack and Theodora Belicec (King Donovan and Carolyn Jones) call him after they discover what appears to be a weird corpse on their pool table, a corpse that resembles a not-fully-formed version of Jack. Then they discover huge seed pods inside which duplicates of the townspeople are growing ... 

Something frightful on the pool table

This classic horror science-fiction movie has gotten even better with age. It packs a lot into an economical 80 minutes, and is beautifully paced and directed. McCarthy gives an especially passionate performance as a desperate man trying to not only save the woman he has always loved but the town and indeed the world as well. Wynter also gives a fine performance, along with Donovan and many others; Jones is particularly notable. Indeed the film is packed with interesting fifties performers, including Jean Willes as Miles' nurse, Sally; Virginia Christine as Becky's cousin, Wilma; Dabbs Greer, Larry Gates and others. Whit Bissell and Richard Deacon feature in the film's framing sequences, which were omitted in re-release.

Paranoid? Kevin McCarthy

Credit must be given to Daniel Mainwaring's script, Carmen Dragon's evocative score, and especially Ellsworth Fredericks' superb cinematography in "Super Scope." Although he did turn in fine directorial jobs on other films, this remains the high-water mark in the career of Don Siegel. The greenhouse sequence when all the pods are discovered with its off-kilter angles is only one of several notable sequences. The film's one great flaw is the utter illogic of Becky's "conversion" and one wishes the filmmakers had handled it much differently, but by no means does it strip the film of impact and enjoyment. 

Verdict: This is a real creepy treat. This is as much a well-crafted suspense thriller as it is a classic horror sci-fi film. ***1/2.