How sad is this?

As Good As It Gets

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

A short, low budget production. Most of the acting was a bit wooden,but the dialog had it's moments. A police procedural much like the first half of a "Law and Order" episode. NO hunches or lucky coincidences, just good old-fashioned police work - both forensics and leg work solves the case. A well-structured chain of evidence leads detectives to their murder suspect. Watch for brief appearances of a very young Jack Lord as a police lab assistant.All-in-all a pretty good movie.

A relatively unknown 'B' movie second feature,THE TATTOOED STRANGER is developing something of a cult following after being shown several times on late-night UK TV in recent years (the last being merely several days ago).The murder mystery plot and script are both rather mundane,the performances weak and direction routine,yet the location work around New York is interesting and well photographed,and something you would rarely see in American films at this time.The very reason for it's cult following is the obscurity of it's cast and crew,unheralded even by normal American 'B' movie standards.The only well-known face here is Jack Lord,but at this stage of his career he was as unrenowned as virtually everybody else involved in this project,and his is a wordless,uncredited role which lasts barely a minute.The only other slightly well-known performers on board are Patricia Barry (billed here as Patricia White) and Lewis Charles (who like Lord is uncredited),and the director Edward Montagne later worked more prolifically on TV as a producer,not surprising as his direction is mostly nondescript and awkward (as is nominal lead actor John Miles) during the exchanges of flat,uninspired dialogue,though he redeems himself partially with the location work of scarcely seen side streets,tenements and backyards in New York.This certainly saves the film from total mediocrity,and although he probably didn't realise it at the time,Montagne's decision to film in such run-down neighbourhoods provide an engaging,even mildly fascinating social document of one of the World's great cities of the time shortly after the end of the Second World War.Had THE TATTOOED STRANGER been wholly studio-bound,it would have been a totally forgotten and ignored routine 'B' murder mystery (among scores of others),with insipid acting,writing and direction,but thanks to it's real outdoor New York settings,is certainly a mark up on the usual fare from this particular genre.RATING:5 and a half out of 10.

THE TATTOOED STRANGER was made two years after THE NAKED CITY and is obviously strongly influenced by it. Both films start with the murder of a woman and no clues. Both feature a team of a veteran and a neophyte detective. Both emphasize the legwork the young detective has to do, going from store to store throughout the city. In both the young detective tries to catch the killer alone. And both even feature a location with gravestones in the final chase. Yet, still, STRANGER is much more effective in capturing the real, everyday city, and is a memorable film in its own right. THE NAKED CITY rarely looks as though it were filmed with a hidden camera; in that bigger-budget production, the real locations look more like sets, with hired extras, studio camera-work and lighting, etc. (The exception, of course, is the breathtaking finale on the Williamsburg Bridge.) And the foreground action takes precedence; one doesn't get a strong sense of the texture of the city the way one does in STRANGER, where almost the entire film is made on various locations, including The Bowery.The detection and the crime are quite realistic, and the bit players--including two tattoo experts and various luncheonette owners--seem as though they were pulled off the street. The excellent pacing matches a good script and performances appropriate to the story. The dialogue is sharp: pointing the body out to morgue attendants arriving just after the shootout, "He's over here, just the way you like him." And the young clean-cut cop has a nice sense of what a cop can get away with. In one of those greasy luncheonettes he tells a customer who seems interested in his conversation, "Joe, your ice cream's melting." With its real sense of the seedy atmosphere of the city, its agreeable pacing and crisp dialogue, THE TATTOOED STRANGER is a top notch film in its genre, able to hold its own in comparison to bigger-budgeted films.

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.