"Mystery Street" (1950)

Sometimes movies don't have to be earth-shaking, it is enough they are such escapism and good fun, "Mystery Street" is one of them.

It is a cutest little b&w movie from 1950. shot without big budget or biggest stars - final results, however, are first-class entertainment, good old fashioned crime story with police inspectors, unsolved crime, shadows, blackmail and even scientistic help from Harvard Medical School. Looking back, it could hardly been improved even with bigger budget - for this story we don't need big explosions, expensive costumes or cars, everything goes smoothly just like some detective novel.

Main protagonist here is Ricardo Montalbán ( young and photogenic Mexican actor) in a role of young policeman doing his research on skeleton recently found. For this case he is assisted by Harvard doctor who easily identifies body of a victim as young woman in her early 20es, probably blond, probably dancer. Searching for every young woman who might disappear around that time, Montalbán eventually discover her identity and the house where she lived - story than gets complicated because wrong guy gets arrested and more he protests and lies, more he sinks into trouble. Although we have some good acting here, the best of all is a role of nosey landlady who can't help but sniff around for some potential financial award for herself - its no one else but legendary "Bride of Frankestein" Elsa Lanchester and she is brilliant. Every scene with her is a pure joy and effortless acting, she is simply perfect as silly, greedy old woman who don't realise in what danger she puts herself poking her nose in serious crime. It is a pure old fashioned crime movie and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it, since its rarely mentioned today.