An Exercise In Nonsense

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The Stiff Acting and an Inconsistent Attempt at Cynical Humor do Weigh This One Down Somewhat. What Remains Though are Some Really Downbeat NYC Locations Captured by the Unfettered Realistic Camera.Film-Noir by Definition Brought to the Screen Sleazy Locations Like Greasy Spoons, Tattoo Parlors, and Things Mostly Abandoned by Hollywood's More Glossy and Friendly Output. This One has More than its Share of Norish Subtext.The Visit to the Tattoo Artist, the Subterranean Chase, and the Closing in a Cemetery Add Gravitas to the Movie that the Sometimes Witty but Mostly Sophomoric Second Rate Writing and Truly Bad Acting Can't Hide.Overall, Hampered by Amateurish Thespians and a Forced Light-Hearted Approach the Film Still Manages to be More than Acceptable Because of its Better, More Sustained Grit.

The next time you take a trek around the Central Park reservoir, you're walking along a trail traveled by many, from Woody Allen in "Hannah and Her Sisters", to Dustin Hoffman stalking an evil dentist in "Marathon Man" and years before, the man who discovers a corpse in a parked car in this obscure film noir. The good Samaritan only wanted to return a glove he found near the parked vehicle (presumably on the south side of the reservoir where parking still takes place) and finds the strangely tattooed woman who obviously doesn't need it anymore-she's dead! Clues include fingerprints on the car, strange remnants of a rare blade of grass, to the corpse's tattoo, and this leads to an attempted attack on the corpse, more clues located in the Bronx (on Gun Hill Road) to a series of strange characters. This is filled with an extremely rare obscure cast, faces you may recognize from early TV anthology series, but no names you'll know. The film's short running time encompasses tight dialog and enough intrigue to fill up several film noirs. A rare glimpse of vintage New York location footage makes this a pleasing curio, a real sleeper.

Cops try to solve the murder of a woman with only a tattoo to go on. This is a lousy movie. The performances are terrible across the board, with everyone either too wooden or way too sunny. Every time I saw John Miles (which is practically the entire movie) I wanted to wipe that dumb grin off his face. The whole thing has an absurdly jaunty feel to it, and the silly music doesn't help. Nor does the script, filled with awful exposition, bad jokes, and far too flippant in tone. As a police procedural it brings nothing new to the table, and the action scenes are oddly sluggish. There are maybe one or two interesting details, and the location photography is actually pretty good. But the rest of it stinks.

This is a great B film from the 1950's, because it deals with forensics just like the present day CSI Series TV shows. The police take it step by step in the laboratory and look at all the evidence with a fine toothed comb! Howard Hughes produced this film for only $124,000 and most of the filming was done in NYC, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, Queens. John Miles,(Detective Frank Tobin),"Gunfighters",'47 was a ex-marine who was able to get a college education and met up with a gal named Patricia Barry,(Patricia White),"Dear Heart",'64, who was able to assist Frank Tobin in his investigation into a young woman who had a Tattoo and was found in Central Park. If you really like B&W Classic B Films, this is a very worth while to just sit back and enjoy from beginning to END!