A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Monday, November 18, 2024

The Killer That Stalked New York (Earl McEvoy, 1950)

Evelyn Keyes in The Killer That Stalked New York
Cast: Evelyn Keyes, Charles Korvin, William Bishop, Dorothy Malone, Lola Albright, Barry Kelley, Carl Benton Reid, Ludwig Donath, Art Smith, Whit Bissell, Roy Roberts, Connie Gilchrist, Dan Riss, Harry Shannon, Jim Backus, Reed Hadley (voice). Screenplay: Harry Essex, based on a magazine article by Milton Lehman. Cinematography: Joseph F.  Biroc. Art direction: Walter Holscher. Film editing: Jerome Thoms. Music: Hans J. Salter. 

I wonder what RFK Jr. would have to say about The Killer That Stalked New York, now that he threatens to put his anti-vax quackery into effect. It's a taut little thriller about a smallpox epidemic, in which the heroes are the governmental and medical officials who race against time to vaccinate 8 million people against the disease while its carrier moves among them. The carrier is Sheila Bennet (Evelyn Keyes), who has been to Cuba to retrieve some diamonds that her boyfriend, Matt Krane (Charles Korvin), wants to fence. Somewhere in her journey, she started to get sick, and by the time she arrives in New York City, she's really not feeling so well. Trying to dodge the Treasury agent (Barry Kelley) who's on her tail, she plays hide-and-seek around the city, and when she discovers her boyfriend is double-crossing her, she gets even more furtive. Several people will die from direct contact with her, and others will become carriers before her pursuers, including the doctor (William Bishop) who treated her without knowing the real nature of her disease, finally track her down. A voiceover (Reed Hadley) keeps hyping the urgency of the situation, but it's really not necessary -- Earl McEvoy's crisp pacing and the effective location shooting by Joseph F. Biroc supply enough intensity and reality. There are some nice surprises among the cast, including Dorothy Malone as a nurse and Jim Backus as a club owner, both of them pre-stardom.  

 

Posted by at
Links: ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)