Classic Films in Focus: MYSTERY STREET (1950)

The visual and narrative style of Mystery Street (1950) will be familiar to anyone who watches modern police procedurals on television, especially shows that feature a lot of forensic analysis of corpses and crime scenes. Those looking for the intensity of top-shelf crime pictures will probably be disappointed, even with John Sturges in the director's chair and Ricardo Montalbán taking the lead as the police detective trying to catch a young woman's murderer. Still, the picture has its charms, especially for fans of the great Elsa Lanchester and those who really appreciate the piece-by-piece and bone-by-bone puzzle solving of forensic crime shows like Bones and the many iterations of CSI. 

Ricardo Montalbán stars as Lieutenant Peter Moralas, a police detective working in Cape Cod and Boston to solve the murder of Vivian Heldon (Jan Sterling), whose skeletal remains are found months after she is last seen with a very drunk Henry Shanway (Marshall Thompson). With only bones to examine at first, Moralas turns to Dr. McAdoo (Bruce Bennett), a Harvard forensics expert, for help in identifying the body and building a case to find her killer. Henry's wife, Grace (Sally Forrest), persists in believing in his innocence even as evidence against Henry mounts, while Vivian's shady landlady, Mrs. Smerrling (Elsa Lanchester), tries to blackmail the real killer, a wealthy family man named James Harkley (Edmon Ryan).

It's not a spoiler to reveal the identity of the murderer because the movie does that in its opening, which shows us the events of the night Vivian dies and makes it clear that Henry is innocent. Thus, the audience always knows what Moralas and his associates are trying to learn, and the suspense lies in our concern that the cops will pin the crime on the wrong man. We have the completed puzzle in front of us, while the detectives have to find and try to fit each piece, and we can see how they get it wrong as they rush to convict the most obvious suspect. While Moralas tears apart the lives of the young couple, who are still grieving the child Grace miscarried on the night of the murder, we watch the crafty Mrs. Smerrling put the truth together like a blackmailing Miss Marple, but she has no interest in sharing her information with the cops. The picture lavishes attention on the amazing potential of forensic science but doesn't seem especially interested in making Moralas and the police in general look good, even at the end when Moralas weakly attempts to apologize to Grace for everything he has forced her and her husband to endure. 

The performances are a mixed bag, as well, but a few standouts are worth noting. Montalbán does a fine job with his character, although Moralas is not as developed and interesting as one would like for a protagonist. He has a few scenes that address his obvious identity as an outsider, and it's nice to see him push back against Harkley's prejudice and preening sense of superiority. Harkley himself is not a very interesting villain, just another rich white guy who thinks the world revolves around him, and Henry Shanway and Dr. McAdoo are both more plot devices than people. The female characters possess all the nuance and complexity the men lack, starting with Jan Sterling as the doomed Vivian, who isn't perfect but still deserves a lot better than her fate. Sally Forrest channels the helpless rage and grief of Grace Shanway beautifully, while Betsy Blair makes the most of her handful of scenes as Vivian's housemate, Jackie. Elsa Lanchester gives the scene-stealing performance of the picture as the greedy landlady, always assessing every situation and conversation for an opportunity to profit off from it, even though she underestimates her own peril in trying to blackmail a man she knows to be a murderer. 

John Sturges made several undisputed classics, including Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Magnificent Seven (1960), and The Great Escape (1963). Mystery Street came on the heels of a very busy 1949 for Ricardo Montalbán, when he appeared in the Esther Williams musical romance, Neptune's Daughter, the gritty noir, Border Incident, and the war picture, Battleground, which also stars Marshall Thompson. See more of Jan Sterling in Johnny Belinda (1948), Ace in the Hole (1951), and The High and the Mighty (1954), the last of which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Catch Sally Forrest in a starring role in Ida Lupino's Not Wanted (1949), and don't miss Betsy Blair's Oscar-nominated performance in Marty (1955). For more of the brilliant Elsa Lanchester, see The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), Ladies in Retirement (1941), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), and Bell, Book and Candle (1959). She's iconic in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), of course, but it doesn't give her nearly enough to do. If you want to see Lanchester as a proper detective, she plays a parody of Miss Marple in the star-studded mystery comedy, Murder by Death (1976).

Classic Films in Focus: THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE (1959)

Like The Fly (1958), The Alligator People (1959) merges science fiction and horror with a premise about dangerous experimentation gone horribly wrong, although in the second movie's case the combination of animal and human traits is intentional rather than tragically coincidental. Thus we get Richard Crane, as the increasingly reptilian victim of medical innovation, wandering the Louisiana swamps with one seriously bad case of gator face, while Beverly Garland chases after him as a dedicated wife who just won't take "no" for an answer. Most horror fans will come to The Alligator People for Lon Chaney, Jr., who plays a drunken villain, or for another example of the drive-in sci-fi chiller that flowered in the 1950s, but additional attractions can be found in the direction of Roy Del Ruth and performances from experienced players like Bruce Bennett, George Macready, and Frieda Inescort, each of whom helps to nudge the picture beyond mere B-movie spectacle.

Garland is the story's protagonist, a newly married nurse named Joyce Webster whose husband, Paul (Richard Crane), vanishes from a train on their honeymoon. Joyce tracks Paul to his family's plantation in the swamps, where she meets his mother, Mrs. Hawthorne (Frieda Inescort), who gives Joyce an icy welcome and tries to force her to leave. Determined to uncover the truth, Joyce stays until her mother-in-law and a local medical researcher, Dr. Sinclair (George Macready), reveal that Paul is suffering the side effects of a radical treatment for injuries he sustained in a plane crash during the war. Joyce joins their efforts to reverse Paul's transformation, but chaos erupts when a loutish plantation worker, Manon (Lon Chaney, Jr.), transfers his violent hatred for alligators to the alligator man.

The Alligator People is by no means a great film, and it often makes choices that are typical of its genre, but it also offers pleasant surprises. The pseudo-science of the central plot is wrapped in a strange psychological setup that presents Joyce, now known as Jane, as a victim of trauma induced amnesia as a result of her experience. Bruce Bennett appears in the frame scenes as one of two sexist doctors who can't stop mentioning how attractive the nurse is even as they use hypnosis to dredge up her horrible past. On the plus side, the frame tale serves a practical purpose in that it lets the audience know right away that this story won't end well for the alligator man or his bride, much as the opening of The Fly sets that story on its unbending course toward tragedy. The sexism also gets a much appreciated rebuke in the stalwart devotion of Joyce, who refuses to give up her search or abandon her husband once she sees his monstrous transformation. She even goes after him at the end, screaming not so much at his freakish appearance as his awful demise. Sure, his alligator head looks utterly fake, and we can even see the seams in his bodysuit, but Beverly Garland's performance as Joyce helps us focus on the drama of the situation rather than its special effects budget.

The success of the movie depends mostly on Garland, who plays Joyce as an active, intelligent woman caught up in overwhelming horror, but several supporting performances are worth noting. Lon Chaney. Jr. makes his presence felt as the belligerent Manon, a far nastier role than the actor's best known characters in other horror films. With his hook hand and his lecherous eye, Manon is a true monster; he provides a telling contrast to Paul, who loses the appearance of humanity but retains its inner qualities, even to the bitter end. Frieda Inescort also turns in a good performance as Paul's distraught mother; her accent wanders a bit, but she navigates the emotional territory of her character with greater assurance, letting her stern rejection of Joyce melt into shared misery over a loved one's terrible fate. Richard Crane gets less screen time as Paul, since he mostly skulks around the bayou in hiding, but his opening scenes set the stage for his later anguish. Hold on to the subtle cues on his handsome face as he talks about his accident with Joyce; that subtlety is lost later, but its emotional impact endures. Bruce Bennett and George Macready are both somewhat underused in their roles, but they give their doctors far more animation than such characters usually have in these pictures.

Some sci-fi B movies of this era are beloved precisely because they are campy and badly done, but The Alligator People takes a more serious tone, and despite its faults it's really a much better picture than it probably has any right to be. Give some of the credit for that to Roy Del Ruth, who also directed Born to Dance (1936), It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), and On Moonlight Bay (1951). See more of Beverly Garland in D.O.A. (1950), Not of This Earth (1957), and Twice-Told Tales (1963); she also enjoyed a long and varied television career and was even nominated for an Emmy. Lon Chaney, Jr. is best remembered for The Wolf Man (1941), but he plays supporting roles in many films, including The Black Castle (1952), The Black Sleep (1956), and The Haunted Palace (1963). Catch Frieda Inescort in Pride and Prejudice (1940), You'll Never Get Rich (1941), and The Return of the Vampire (1943). For similar 50s creature features, try I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958), and Return of the Fly (1959).