The “killer” is smallpox, the “stalking” is a sudden outbreak of the virus in modern times and “New York” is New York City shot (partly) on-location in this screwy low-budget medical/crime drama. Evelyn Keyes is an American jazz singer turned jewel smuggler just returned to The Big Apple after doing some shady business in Cuba. A US Treasury agent is following her, but he’s so unsubtle that he may as well be simultaneously practicing the pan flute as he shadows her through subway stations and across busy streets. She knows he’s there. What she DOESN’T know is that she has smallpox. She’s smuggled that into the city, too. She thinks that her fatigue, fever and nausea is just some regular old virus that she needs to sleep off. Her man (suave weasel Charles Korvin) will take care of her, for sure. In between his cheating on her with her sister, at least.
Along the way, she passes on the disease to all sorts of people who happen to come into contact with her. Next thing you know, it’s all over the city, the top news story, a few people are dead and the rest are in a panic. Now, not only is the law after her, but so is a team of doctors.
Sounds like a shameless rip-off of Elia Kazan’s Panic in the Streets, right?
But then you look a little closer and see that this film came out only a few months after it. It had to have been made at around the same time. (Also, Panic in the Streets wasn’t a hit in 1950, so it would have been an odd choice for a set of coattails to ride). Research a little more and you’ll find that there was a real life smallpox outbreak in New York City in 1947 that resulted in panic and mass vaccinations and no doubt provided the inspiration for this film.
Does any of this make The Killer That Stalked New York a good movie? No. It’s pure looney tunes, but not in a good way. It’s overblown to the max. Kiss a bunch of brain cells goodbye. This film throws logic out the window and then doesn’t replace it with anything other than limp drama. The actors can’t make it sing and director Earl McEvoy is a strict B-movie journeyman. On the bright side, it moves fast (running time: just under eighty minutes) and it builds up to a campy climax that isn’t half-bad. None of that is enough though to make you stop rooting for smallpox to hurry up and wipe out all of these nobodies.