Wonderfully offbeat film!

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Better Late Then Never

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

I watched this the day after NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH (1948) because it has a similar reputation for seediness; the result, however, is even more modest and, frankly, negligible (while included among the 250 Quintessential Noirs, several titles that did not make the list were obviously more deserving of a place). Though RKO made some of the best noirs, this is a cut-rate production with a totally unfamiliar cast and crew! The title could allude to either the female victim (a bigamist for the purposes of insurance fraud) or her murderer (who, however, remains a cipher to the very end, thus ineffective). The protagonists are a seasoned cop and his rookie partner which, typically, emerges a bumpy but ultimately mutually affectionate partnership; also on hand is an attractive female botanist who obviously catches the young man's attention. Incidentally, the film's most noteworthy elements – apart from adopting hilarious nick-names such as "Billy Alcohol" and "The Electric Rembrandt" for its more colorful characters! – are the rarity (for this time in American cinema) of watching a meticulous scene-of-the crime investigation, as well as tattoo-painting and gravestone-carving!

Tattooed Stranger, The (1950) ** (out of 4) A mysterious woman is found dead in Central Park but the police don't know who she is. Two detectives jump on the case and try to identify her but the only thing they have on her is a strange tattoo on her arm. Here's another RKO thriller that gets a few points for trying to tell the story differently than what we're use to but in the end the performances just can't carry the picture. Technically speaking this film is pretty impressive with some very good editing but the story itself is rather dull. The film really tries to capture how the police would go by solving this case, which means we get a lot of footwork and stuff dealing with science. This stuff works nicely but I only wish the story was stronger. It was rather funny that people with tattoos were looked at as evil people and tattoo parlors are looked at as "bad people" hangouts.

This police procedural is no worse than many others of its era and better than quite a few. Obviously it is following in the steps of "Dragnet" and "Naked City" but emerges as an enjoyable programmer. The best thing about it is the unadorned look it provides into a world now long gone...the lower class New York of the late 40's/early 50's. Here it is in all its seedy glory, from the old-school tattoo parlors to the cheap hotels to the greasy spoons. These old police films are like travelogues to a bygone era and very bittersweet to anybody who dislikes the sanitized, soulless cityscape of today.Also intriguing is the emphasis on the nuts-and-bolts scientific aspect of solving the crime...in this case, the murder of a tattooed woman found in an abandoned car. Our main heroes, Detectives Tobin and Corrigan, do the footwork, but without the tedious and painstaking efforts of the "lab boys", they'd get nowhere. Although the technology is not in the same league, the cops here use the dogged persistence of a C.S.I. investigator to track down their man.The way some reviewers have written about this movie, you think it would have been directed by Ed Wood and acted by extras from his movies. What bosh! I enjoyed John Miles as the gangly ex-Marine turned cop Tobin...he had a happy-go-lucky, easy-going approach to the role that's a welcome change from the usual stone-faced histrionics of most movie cops of the period. Patricia Barry is cute and delightful as his perky girlfriend who helps solve the crime. Walter Kinsella is stuffy and droll as the older detective Corrigan. I rather liked the chemistry of these two and it made for something a bit different than the sort of robotic "Dragnet" approach.The mystery itself is not too deep and the final chase and shoot-out certainly won't rank amongst the classics of crime cinema, but during it's brief running time, "The Tattooed Stranger" more than held my interest.

A dead woman is in the park but before the police can start to work out who the killer was, they must first work out who the woman is. The only clues are a blade of grass not from the area on the body and a small tattoo on the woman's body that someone had tried to remove and is clearly a way of tracing her. The autopsy gives Detective Tobin and Lieutenant Corrigan other leads to painstakingly follow and soon they are at least getting close to the identity of the victim if not the perpetrator. However the more they learn the deeper the mystery gets.This film plays it straight down the middle as a crime thriller that is all about the legwork and frustrating detail associated with day-to-day police work; although there are a few chases and such, it pretty much does this for the majority. This approach is not that much of a problem because I found it quite interesting to a point, problem is that that point was not long into it and the film didn't do anything interesting after a while. The mix of approaches didn't do enough to hold my interest and the actual plot didn't have enough mystery or urgency to it to engage for long. The work aspect of the investigation is bumped too easily by the need for action (which isn't that great) meaning that neither of them really work that well. It does just about enough to satisfy those looking for a crime b-movie but certainly no more than that.The cast aren't that great either as they mostly match the standard of the genre by turning in rather stiff performances without character or anything to make them stick in the mind. Miles is stiff and cannot manage to create any chemistry with Barry, who is lumbered with a thankless role and an unnecessarily large character. Kinsella, Tweddell, McLennan and others pretty much do the same and nobody can do more than just say their lines – suffice to say this is not the film to come to for performances. Likewise director Montagne is happy doing what the genre requires and he never threatens to do more than just point the camera and shoot, although the chase through the back gardens was quite well done.Overall a fairly standard crime thriller that still stands up as a so-so b-movie without anything special to recommend it for or anything awful to knock it for. Not quite bland but not too far off, will distract the undemanding but is unlikely to be sought out by anyone.