This 1950 crime procedural emphasizes the procedure, with dialogue as dry as the Mojave and bland, robotic performances. It’s historically interesting as a clear precursor for the cookie-cutter TV procedurals still popular today, such as the Law & Order and CSI franchises. It’s also a welcome opportunity to see Ricardo Montalban in his prime in a mostly colorblind role, and a rare project shot partially on location at Harvard. However, despite its Oscar nomination for story, it’s a mind-numbingly dull plod from murder to apprehension.
Buy Mystery Street Blu-rayMontalban stars as a police detective assigned to identify a skeleton found on the beach at Cape Cod. With little to go on, he engages a forensics expert at Harvard who expounds at length about the science used to reveal clues. Armed with this new knowledge, the detective works to identify the victim, confirm his suspicion of foul play, and track down the killer.
Director John Sturges presents the murder to viewers before introducing Montalban, so most of the film is him catching up to what we learned in the first few minutes. The victim is a bar girl named Vivian who lives in a boarding house for single ladies. Vivian is desperate to pay rent, so she offers to drive a drunk home in order to steal his car to go shake down her rich married boyfriend for money. When she and the car vanish, the drunk is the natural suspect, putting his marriage and career at risk unless Montalban finds a better murder suspect.
I’m no criminal pathologist, but I’m fairly certain a buried body can’t turn into a fully stripped skeleton in three months, making the science of the whole concept hilariously rickety from the start. The Harvard pathologist walks us through his tools and findings like he’s the Christopher Columbus of medical examination, dazzling Montalban with his superior intellect even though much of it sounds likely to have been fairly common knowledge by the 1950s. There’s also a ridiculous scene where the cops use overlays of pictures of potential victims on top of a picture of the skull to identify the girl, in practice a virtual impossibility due to picture size and angle variances. For a film so beholden to the wonders of newfangled procedure, it takes too many short cuts with its facts.
The Blu-ray presents the film in its original 1.37:1 aspect ratio, with DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono sound. No restoration notes are provided, and no thorough restoration appears to have been performed, but the audio and video quality are clearly defined and devoid of any significant flaws. In addition to a featurette about the film, the disc includes two classic MGM cartoons and the original theatrical trailer.
While the film doesn’t offer much intrigue, action, or emotion, it’s interesting to see the 29-year-old Montalban playing a lead role not dictated by his heritage. He doesn’t get much opportunity to flex his thespian chops due to the tightly structured emphasis on procedure, but just the existence of his early lead performance is cause enough for celebration. If only the writers had spent more time on the mystery than the science.
