BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

classicsoncall I can really appreciate a film I've never heard of when it delivers an intriguing story with compelling characters. Elsa Lanchester is positively off the rails here as a scheming, money obsessed landlady who has the temerity to attempt blackmail on a guy who's already killed someone, and she knows it! How she couldn't figure out that he might try to kill her just as handily kind of escapes me, but I guess she only saw the dollar signs. Funny, but I had the same impression of the pharmacist in "The Two Mrs. Carroll's" when he tried to put the screws to Humphrey Bogart. Not a smart move.If you didn't know who Detective Moralas was starting out, his familiar appearance might have driven you crazy while the story progressed. This is probably the earliest film I've seen Ricardo Montalban in and he did a nice job here as the Boston homicide cop. If nothing else, the story line reveals the excruciating detail that forensic investigation requires to catch a murderer. I don't really watch TV shows like CSI so maybe I'm not in tune to modern police methods much, but for an early story dealing with the science, it took one through a lot of twists and turns to find the killer.There was one remarkable element in the story that I got a bit of a chuckle out of having nothing to do with the movie per se, but with Mrs. Shanway's (Sally Forrest) stay at the hospital when she had the miscarriage. One of the receipts she produced for Moralas was a forty eight dollar hospital bill. I was born the same year this film came out, and believe it or not, my mother saved the hospital bill as well. Lest you think the amount they came up with here was made up for the movie, I can confirm that my own delivery was a bargain at sixty dollars!

lampic Sometimes movies don't have to be earth-shaking, it is enough they are such escapism and good fun, "Mystery Street" is one of them.It is a cutest little b&w movie from 1950. shot without big budget or biggest stars - final results, however, are first-class entertainment, good old fashioned crime story with police inspectors, unsolved crime, shadows, blackmail and even scientistic help from Harvard Medical School. Looking back, it could hardly been improved even with bigger budget - for this story we don't need big explosions, expensive costumes or cars, everything goes smoothly just like some detective novel.Main protagonist here is Ricardo Montalbán ( young and photogenic Mexican actor) in a role of young policeman doing his research on skeleton recently found. For this case he is assisted by Harvard doctor who easily identifies body of a victim as young woman in her early 20es, probably blonde, probably dancer. Searching for every young woman who might disappear around that time, Montalbán eventually discover her identity and the house where she lived - story than gets complicated because wrong guy gets arrested and more he protests and lies, more he sinks into trouble. Although we have some good acting here, the best of all is a role of nosy landlady who can't help but sniff around for some potential financial award for herself - its no one else but legendary "Bride of Frankestein" Elsa Lanchester and she is brilliant. Every scene with her is a pure joy and effortless acting, she is simply perfect as silly, greedy old woman who don't realize in what danger she puts herself poking her nose in serious crime. It is a pure old fashioned crime movie and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it, since its rarely mentioned today.

evanston_dad A grisly little entry in the police-procedural film noir sub-genre that stars a swarthy Ricardo Montalban as chief detective investigating the death of a mysterious girl (Jan Sterling) whose skeleton is found buried on a beach. Though there are a string of plot threads swirling around the true identity of the girl's murderer, this isn't a mystery (misleading title aside) and we pretty much know who the culprit is from early on. This movie is more interested in the forensics work that goes into tracking down the murderer -- think of it as a 1950s version of a CSI show. To that end, there are all sorts of little nasty details that come as a bit of a surprise in a film from this time period -- the foot of a skeleton poking out of a sand dune, a photo of a dead woman lying in a pool of blood, the tiny bones of an unborn baby being contained in an envelope -- and the film goes out of its way to emphasize the deadness of a dead human body (as Jan Sterling's body is being carried away from the car in which she was just shot, the murdered accidentally thunks her head against the car door).Sterling, despite the fact that she usually played caustic, cheap blondes, always had a winning quality for me, and I was somewhat bummed that she dies so early on. But to make up for the lack of her, there's a wonderful performance by Elsa Lanchester as an eccentric busy-body and a smaller and less showy but captivating performance by Betsy Blair (aka Mrs. Gene Kelly) as Sterling's friend and neighbor.Directed with style by John Sturges.Grade: A-

GManfred Wasn't sure if I would like this one but it was in the DVD collection so I thought what the hell. I couldn't have been more surprised. Ricardo Montalban was never one of my favorites - or even one of my second favorites - but was at whatever passes for his best in Mystery Street. He got able support from stalwart Bruce Bennett and the whole picture benefited from another fey performance by Elsa Lanchester, who never disappoints. Whenever the story began to go slack her presence helped immeasurably.The story was very absorbing and held the interest throughout but was a tad long and could have been a bit tighter. Was very impressed by Director John Sturges' grasp of the noir genre and the last 20 minutes of the film were appropriately tense and includes an exciting chase. Also enjoyed the Maguffin as well as the red herrings and dead-ends strewn about the plot.A lot of readers have summarized the plot, so suffice it to say that this is a very underrated film and deserves better exposure than it has had over the past 60 years. A top notch mixture of casting, directing and storyline all came together for my rating of 8 out of 10.