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!

Even though this was a B film even though B films from MGM were better than most, Ricardo Montalban must have liked working in this film for while he was a Latino cop he was not a Latin lover as he and Fernando Lamas in this era were always cast. Mystery Street casts him as a police detective getting and solving a missing person case that turns into a homicide.The victim is Jan Sterling and she's seen in a brief and memorable prologue where she's a girl who gets around. On her last night on earth she picks up distraught young husband Marshall Thompson at a diner and then drives off with his car. That's the last time anyone, but her murderer sees Sterling alive as she's killed and Thompson's car and Sterling disappear. When they are recovered it's a murder case and Thompson is the fall guy.One thing Sterling left behind was a little black book with all kinds of phone numbers all of the men in her life. There were over one hundred of them so you can see how Jan got around. Somewhere in that book is the number of her murderer and Montalban has to go methodically through them. In that Mystery Street becomes quite realistic showing that police work isn't all car chases and gun battles but a lot of routine checking of clues. There's a plum role in Mystery Street for Elsa Lanchester who was Sterling's landlady and a woman with an eye to make a quick buck. She catches on before the police do who the real killer is and it costs her dear.Some future Hollywood heavyweights were involved in the making of Mystery Street, it's an early film for director John Sturges who in a few years would be getting bigger budgets and writer Richard Brooks who would soon be directing. Other roles to take note of are Sally Forrest as Thompson's loyal wife and Bruce Bennett as a Harvard Professor of Pathology who is the forensics man on the case. Forensics are most important here.This is a neat noir film from MGM's B unit and at other studios this could be considered an A.

This one really knocked me out. The screenplay is so tight. There is nothing unbelievable. The characters are all interesting and then there is Elsa Lanchester perfectly understanding how to make the most of every second. Ricardo Montalban was such a fine actor. He deserved a much better movie career. Then to see people like Jan Sterling and Betsy Blair in such good roles and offering such solid performances is such a pleasure. We kept saying, "This is Law and Order!" And what complement could be greater only this came about 40 years earlier. Of course you know it will have a satisfying ending but you won't believe the roller coaster ride you are given first. And Boston!!! When has that city ever been given such prominence. The movie is a knockout. Not a wasted second. How did this one get away? Masterpiece is overused but this is one.

Heavy spoiler alert. Montalban plays rural police detective who moves downtown to Beantown and finds himself enmeshed in strange murder where only the victim's skeleton remains. With the medical assistance of Bennett, Montalban eventually works his way through to the killer. I would guess this qualifies as sort of light film noir, in sophisticated fashion the movie meanders through other suspects before the real killer emerges. Montalban really was a quietly effective gem of an artist with true screen presence. He went strong from this until nearly 40 years later in the first Naked Gun, and then another ten years beyond that (while looking buff in Star Trek II along the way). Nice tight movie.