Mystery Street
93 min. / B&W / 1.37:1 / DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono / SDH
Warner Archive BD $24.99
Available from Movie Zyng
Skeletal remains found at the beach need to be identified and a murderer corralled, and a Boston cop and Harvard Medical School forensics scientist team up to crack the case in the sloppily-titled but excellently produced Mystery Street.
Terrific, well-paced, methodical crime drama that is miles better than just about any other police procedural film I can think of. Ricardo Montalban is the cop, Bruce Bennett is the Harvard man, and Elsa Lanchester steals the picture as the murder victim's landlady, who knows a little bit more than it's healthy for her to know. Jan Sterling is our unfortunate not-long-for-the-world gal, the luckless Marshall Thompson is the innocent man in the wrong place at the wrong time (and how!) and Sally Forrest is his steadfast wife, and now we've gotten the cast out of the way. Along with Miss Lanchester - who chews up the scenery in a manner that must've made her husband, Charles Laughton, proud - the best thing about the film is the cinematography of John Alton (An American in Paris), a textbook example of how to light and shoot a film noir. Director Sturges was relatively early in his career but he does a great job (he and Alton would work together again for Bad Day at Black Rock). And shooting the film in Boston adds both to its interest and its realism.
Million-dollar Dialog:
Ricardo: "Is your husband home?"
Elsa, rolling eyes: "Er, not exactly."
The scene where the faces of missing women are superimposed over the skull found on the beach is more horrifying than anything I've seen in any horror films up to that time; once seen, never forgotten. This is a terrific A-level picture with a B-level cast, but it should be on any short list of best and most memorable noirs, particularly for fans of the ubiquitous forensics science shows and podcasts so popular today.
Bonus material includes a low-key commentary track by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, a short but useful featurette on the film under Mystery Street’s original title, Murder at Harvard, and a pair of fun HD Tom & Jerry cartoons, Tom and Jerry in the Hollywood Bowl and the hilarious Little Quacker (misspelled “Quaker” in the packaging; yeah, we notice stuff like that).
The HD presentation of Mystery Street is up to the typical high standards we’ve come to expect from our friends at Warner Archive, high praise indeed. Don't miss this one.
