If it’s Sunday morning, it’s Turner Classic Movies’ film noir showcase hosted by Eddie Muller. Today’s film, “The Killer That Stalked New York” (1950) is not precisely film noir, but it’s close enough.
It seems a diamond-smuggling mule played by Evelyn Keyes is unwittingly spreading smallpox and setting-off a pandemic that only mass vaccinations can stem. Of course, there are small numbers of crackpots who think the disease is fake or the vaccinations are some kind of Commie plot. Nothing changes.
“The Killer” is based on a 1948 Cosmopolitan article by Milton Lehman about New York’s smallpox outbreak at the time. The city responded immediately, vaccinating six million people within weeks and limiting deaths to two people.
And yes, the “Killer” is the smallpox pandemic, so the use of “That” in the title is grammatically correct.
Image courtesy of IMDB.