- John Sturges' Mystery Street is an entertaining early example of a police procedural that doesn't bother to pass itself off as non-fiction. Whereas the mostly fictional gangster films of the 1930s and 40s never cared all that much about police methods and later documentary-style films like The House on 92nd Street, The Naked City, and T-Men played up their connections to real-world stories, Mystery Street is content simply to focus on the detective work and forensic science involved in solving a fictional murder case. And you can bet they're going to need some pretty sophisticated methods to solve this crime with only a skeleton to go on.
- Of course, the audience knows that the skeleton is that of a young Bostonian "b-girl" named Vivian (Jan Sterling), who latched onto a self-pitying drunk named Shanaway (Marshall Thompson) to get a ride out to Cape Cod. Fed up with Shanaway's questions, Vivian ditched him in the middle of nowhere and stole his car, only to get killed by an unknown man in a secluded area. The assailant then proceeded to ditch the stolen car in a lake, leaving her skeleton to be discovered on a beach. Lieutenant Peter Moralas (Ricardo Montalban) and his partner (Wally Maher) soon realize they're going to need assistance from a Harvard medical researcher Dr. McAdoo (Bruce Bennett) to make any headway on this case.
- Once Dr. McAdoo establishes the victim's approximate age and date of death, Moralas gets to work on the interview circuit. Vivian's loyal friend (Betsy Blair) was the one who filed the missing person report, despite the objections of her quirky landlady, Mrs. Smerrling (Elsa Lanchester). As we eventually discover, Mrs. Smerrling's reticence is based on her naive plan to blackmail a society type named Harkley (Edmon Ryan), whom she correctly suspects of being involved with Vivian before her death. In the meantime, the hapless Shanaway finds himself indicted for Vivian's murder, leaving his poor wife (Sally Forrest) to fend off both reporters' and policemen's questions alike.
- While the film's constant showcasing of Harvard is distracting, particularly when Moralas gets lost on the main Cambridge campus, Mystery Street is ultimately successful for three main reasons. One is that Montalban and Lanchester are both absolutely captivating performers who can't help but be interesting in every role they play. Another is that the forensic methods employed in this film are generally engaging, particularly since the field was still somewhat in its infancy at the local law enforcement level. The final reason is that Sturges peppers the film with interesting locations, including Mrs. Smerrling's cluttered apartment and the crowded Boston trainyard where the murderer is finally captured. If you can get past the stupid title -- there's certainly a mystery, but it hardly involves a specific street -- you may just enjoy this early example of realistic crime fiction.
