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| Year: 1950 Rating: **** |
When debt-ridden Jan Sterling... in an apartment complex where lovely single ladies exist under the bickering rule of middle-aged Elsa Lanchester... walks down the stairs to make an enigmatic phone call, not only does MYSTERY STREET begin, but it could have been another movie entirely...
After Sterling meets up with drunken married Marshall Thompson, driving him through rural back-roads before stealing the car and getting murdered, what follows is tighter and meticulously by-the-book...
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From MYSTERY STREET
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That's because of extremely serious-minded detective in Ricardo Montalban, pairing with almost equally serious (but less stressed) Bruce Bennett, a doctor in the Harvard-set forensic science lab, working alongside Ricardo's location-traipsing/question-asking investigation...
Eventually involving one of the most common noir tropes, the wrong man... as Thompson doesn't remember sharing the dead woman's final hours (she's creepily referred to as Skeleton Girl)... and then the living/breathing leading lady's finally introduced, forty-minutes in...
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| Marshall Thompson and Jan Sterling in MYSTERY STREET |
And since it's Thompson's frantic wife Sally Forrest, our handsome detective is free of the usual distracting/wispy romantic angle... it's strictly business, including the deceased's affable roommate Betsy Blair countered by money-hungry Elsa Lanchester, injecting a flamboyant British stage persona to spice things up...
Yet her random input's mostly in weeding out who's the obvious villain in tricky rich fella Edmon Ryan... making MYSTERY STREET not so much a mystery, or a thriller, really... but more a semi-ensemble character-driven investigation where footwork meets science in a thoroughly entertaining, groundbreaking fashion.
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| Ricardo Montalban in MYSTERY STREET with Bruce Bennett |
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| Ricardo Montalban in MYSTERY STREET with Bruce Bennett |
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| Ricardo Montalban in MYSTERY STREET |
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| Sally Forrest in MYSTERY STREET |
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| Marshall Thompson and Sally Forrest in MYSTERY STREET |
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Ricardo Montalban in MYSTERY STREET with Bruce Bennett
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| Marshall Thompson and Sally Forrest in MYSTERY STREET |
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| Betsy Blair in MYSTERY STREET |
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| From MYSTERY STREET |
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| Marshall Thompson and Jan Sterling in MYSTERY STREET |
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| Ricardo Montalban in MYSTERY STREET |
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| Sally Forrest in MYSTERY STREET |
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| Sally Forrest in MYSTERY STREET with Betsy Blair |
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| From MYSTERY STREET |
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| From MYSTERY STREET |
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| Jan Sterling in MYSTERY STREET |
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| Bruce Bennett in MYSTERY STREET |
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Ricardo Montalban in MYSTERY STREET with Wally Maher
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| Ralph Dumke and Ricardo Montalban in MYSTERY STREET |
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| Ricardo Montalban in MYSTERY STREET with Bruce Bennett |
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Ricardo Montalban in MYSTERY STREET with Bruce Bennett
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Ricardo Montalban in MYSTERY STREET with Edmon Ryan
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| Ricardo Montalban in MYSTERY STREET |
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Sally Forrest in MYSTERY STREET with Betsy Blair
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