CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Dotbankey A lot of fun.

Connianatu How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

dougdoepke Pretty hard to mix noir with a smallpox epidemic, but ace screenwriter Essex makes a go of it. That's thanks to weaving gem smuggler Sheila's (Keyes) personal story with the other thing she smuggled in, namely smallpox. So, as she travels around New York, so does the disease, causing a major urban crisis. As a result, we watch her get sicker and sicker chasing after a faithless boyfriend (Korvin); at the same time, the city comes more and more unglued chasing after her.I love those nighttime street shots of Manhattan. Cameraman Biroc does an eye-catching job translating those into a noirish atmosphere that hangs like a death shroud over the city. How appropriate. And catch that great supporting cast of one familiar face after another adding a ton of character color. I'm just sorry the gorgeous Dorothy Malone wasn't given more to do than follow Dr. Wood (Bishop) around with a hypodermic needle. Then too, I hope glamour girl Keyes was paid double because she sure looks a wreck by movie's end.Mark this one down as one more entry in the 1950's paranoia race. If it's not the Russian commies or some radioactive mutant or hideous space aliens, it's a deadly pandemic that threatened us all. It's a wonder we geezers survived. But that's okay, because the paranoia makes for exciting movie fare, including this nifty number. Meanwhile, I'm off to where else- - to get vaccinated, of course.

Robert J. Maxwell We see Evelyn Keyes stepping off a train Penn Station in New York City, looking a little worried. We see Barry Kelley, a Treasury Agent, step off the same train and follow her through the station. The resonant baritone of Reed Hadley informs us that Keyes is returning from Cuba. Not only has she arranged for a shipment of diamonds to be smuggled by mail to her husband here in New York, the suave and handsome Charles Korvin, but she is also the killer that stalked New York. She doesn't know it but she's carrying smallpox. The criminal has become the disease he always represented in movies of the period. Keyes eludes Kelley and rushes to her husband, only to discover that he's been shacking up with her own sister, the succulent Lola Albright. And when the package of diamonds finally does arrive, the psychopathic Korvin dumps both of the babes and takes off on his own to sell the gems. This leads Albright to suicide and prompts Keyes to pack a gun and start tracking her husband down in the city.That, essentially, is what the movie is about -- Keyes' pursuit of her miscreant husband, the Treasury Department's pursuit of a diamond smuggler, and the Department of Public Health's pursuit of a carrier of smallpox who is infecting just about everyone who touches her.It's a modest movie. It lacks the talent that was in front of, and behind, the camera in the similarly plotted "Panic in the Streets." The performances are Hollywood-routine. Keyes gives a low-key performance. She could never be accused of overacting. Make up has given her a pasty-faced look that's entirely appropriate to the role, and her sickly appearance grows more pronounced and sweaty as she gets sicker. The director finally shows us only a few pimples on her neck and avoids any signs except perspiration in the other patients. That's just as well because the variola virus can cover almost the entire skin of the patient, as the blisters coalesce, until the skin sloughs off in patches. Pretty ugly stuff. New York locations are used but not imaginatively. The score is generic.But it's not bad. Okay -- so it wasn't directed by Orson Welles, and it doesn't have David Lean's majestic vistas, and the music isn't as melodic and bombastic as Eric Wolfgang Korngold -- but how can a viewer not be involved in a story about a triple chase through the streets of a great city in its florescent period? Of course it WOULD have been better with Welles, Lean, Korngold or their ilk -- but, okay.By the way, it gets a little confusing because it isn't until about half-way through that the Treasury agents and the Public Health people realize they're looking for the same person.But these weaknesses are amply compensated for by the gripping story and the strong, familiar supporting case, all of whom deliver the goods without special fanfare. Look at that cast. Richard Egan, Carl Benton Reid, Ludwig Donath, Roy Roberts, Art Smith, Whit Bissell, Connie Gilchrest, Dorothy Malone, Harry Shannon (a little touch of Orson in the night). You may not recognize the names but you'll recognize the actors if you're at all acquainted with movies of the 1940s and 1950s.I wish some of the principle roles had been cast differently. Keyes, Korvin, and Bishop are all a little stiff. Korvin's most memorable role was as a mambo instructor in an episode of "The Honeymooners." And I wish the director, Earl McEvoy, had sat down and thought about how he might have introduced some poetry into the proceedings. With such a strong story it wouldn't have taken much work. You can't just sell out, no matter what some less perspicacious reviewers, like that so-called "Howdymax", might argue. But, yes, you gotta have the right attitude here. I HAVE that attitude.

sol1218 (Some Spoilers) Sweeping into New York City on a first-class railroad car a killer who doesn't kill with a gun or knife or club but just with his,or it's, touch and breath. A killer that's as old, or even older, then man himself. That killer has a name it's know the world over as smallpox.Arriving in New York one cold November afternoon the killer hidden inside of Sheila Bennet, Evelyn Keyes, and like a Trojen Horse it waits until the opportunity presents itself. Then like a ticking time bomb with it's fuse set off explodes throughout the length and breath of the city.Sheila knows that she's being followed by a U.S Customs officer who's been on her tail since she came back to the US from the Island nation of Cuba. Having smuggled $50,000.00 of illegal uncut diamonds she had to be careful in getting them to her husband Matt, Charles Korvin, to be cut and sold to unsuspecting jewelers in the city. Mailing the diamonds ahead of time Sheila knows that if caught the diamonds won't be found on her. What she doesn't know is that Matt is two timing her by having an affair with her kid sister Francie, Lola Albrght. Even worse he plans to check out of town with the diamonds leaving her as well as Francie holding the bag.Even though we know right from the start of Sheila's deathly condition it doesn't really come to the surface until much later in the movie.The first half of "The Killer that stalked New York" is a crime suspense/drama with the U.S Customs officials and NYC police looking for the stolen diamonds. As Sheila starts to get sick and begins to infect everyone whom she comes in contact with the film reaches the point of a mass panic in the streets type horror movie. Both the police and custom officials together with members of the city's Health Depertment race against the clock to find Sheila before she infects the entire city of New York with the deadly smallpox infection that she's carrying. Sheila finding out from Matt's boss Willie Dennis,Jim Backus,that he quit his job as a nightclub piano player and that he was having an affair with Francie shocks her into the realization to what a heel he is.Confronting Francie at her apartment it turns out that Matt not only stiffed Shelia but her sister as well. Which later leads the guilt-ridden Francie to take her own life. On the run and not knowing that she's infected with smallpox Sheila goes to her brother Sid (With Bissell),who manages a flop-house on the Bowery, to find a place to stay. Only too late does Sheila, and Sid, find out the the stolen diamonds is the last of her problems. Knowing that she's dying Sheila goes to the office of jeweler Arnold Moss, Art Smith, knowing that sleaze-ball of a husband Matt, who ended up beating old man Moss into a bloody pulp, is going to be there to exact vengeance on him.Doucmentry-type drama, based on a true story, with striking black and white on-location photography makes this movie about the horrors of unseen and deadly smallpox unleashed on a unsuspecting public well worth watching.

Art La Cues 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.