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.
