Mystery Street
John Sturges’ 1950 crime procedural gets the forensics right and the finale wrong.
The setup is smart. A skeleton turns up on a Cape Cod beach. Massachusetts detective Ricardo Montalban enlists a Harvard forensic specialist Bruce Bennett to crack the case. What follows is half CSI before CSI existed, half standard-issue noir.
The film shows its hand early. We watch brassy B-girl Vivian phone her married lover, beg him to meet her at her Boston bar. He’s a no-show. She picks up a drunk named Henry, steals his car, drives to Cape Cod for a confrontation that ends with a bullet. Months pass. The skeleton surfaces. Bennett’s scientist identifies the victim. Henry gets pinched. Montalban keeps digging.
That forensic angle—Bennett playing detective through bone analysis and scientific deduction—could have been something special. For two acts, it is. Bennett brings a Sherlock Holmes precision to the role. The procedural details fascinate. Then he vanishes. The third act abandons science for contrivance, climaxing at Trinity Station with the kind of mechanical thriller beats that drain the life from what came before.
Still, there’s much to savor. Montalban radiates an easy charm that never sacrifices authenticity. He’s a natural, helped by Sturges to “tone down” his performance into something grounded and real.1 Elsa Lanchester steals scenes as a scheming landlady working every angle. The Boston location photography adds texture.
The science, admittedly, is as dubious as anything in today’s crime shows. But the effort counts. This was Sturges’ audition at MGM, delivered on time and under budget. He had little control over the material—studio assembly-line work—but his touch shows in the tone, the performances, the confidence of the execution.
“Good script. Good performances by Montalban and Lanchester. Good movie,” Sturges said later.2 He was mostly right. For two-thirds of its running time, Mystery Street is better than average. It just can’t stick the landing.