(SPOILERS FOLLOW)
Sheila Bennet (Evelyn Keyes) an attractive blonde, is returning to New York City after working in Cuba as a night club singer. She is also smuggling diamonds into the country for her husband, Matt (Charles Korvin). Unknown to her, she has also become infected with smallpox.
She arrives by train at Penn Station, followed by a customs official, Treasury Agent (repeatedly referred to as a "T-Man" in the narration) Johnson (Barry Kelly). Sheila calls her husband - who is sleeping with her sister, Francie (Lola Albright, who was later in an awesome sci-fi movie The Monolith Monsters) - and gives Agent Johnson the slip.
She starts feeling sick and is brought to a neighborhood clinic by a police officer, where the protagonist is introduced, Doctor Ben Wood (William Bishop). He sends her on her way with some cough syrup. Soon, smallpox cases are showing up in the hospitals. Wood and the city government try to halt the spread, while Sheila, after being abandoned by her husband once he has the diamonds, spends the rest of the movie trying to locate him. After her sister comes to a tragic end, Sheila's goal changes to murder.
In the finale, everyone's paths cross, mass vaccination stops the disease from wiping out the city, Matt comes to a well-deserved bad end and Sheila, before expiring, helps Dr. Wood by telling him of everyone she had contact with. The end.
The most significant problem with this movie are the two stories. They do inter-relate in broad terms; it is Sheila's movements that spread the disease and her motivations - first to avoid the police, then to kill her husband - that keep her from going to a hospital as she becomes increasingly ill. However, most of the details of the Sheila story are melodramatic and uninteresting compared to the other story, the attempt to organize a response to the disease and Dr. Wood's grappling with his own fears, exemplified by one scene where he imagines New York City, empty of people, decimated by smallpox.
The smallpox story has some fascinating little touches, which led to the documentary feel. There is a brief scene at a US Army disease research center, where tissue samples have been sent to confirm the disease is smallpox, that is a forerunner of every lab scene in every police procedural and disease movie and TV show, where 1950 state-of-art technology is on display. Another scene that has a very "real-world" feel deals with local vaccine producers telling the mayor (Roy Roberts) they can't provide all the vaccine he wants because of health regulations. After he tells them to ignore the regulations they all look like they're calculating how much they're going to lose in the post-crisis law suits.
There are a lot of memorable bit characters as well. Jim Backus plays a sleazy, borderline rapey, bar owner. Seeing Mr. Howell trying to force himself on Sheila is a little traumatic for a child of Gilligan's Island. Connie Gilchrist channels every nosy landlady stereotype, while delivering important life lessons to Sheila - "Matt's a cheating bum...now where's my rent." Most of the supporting cast is similar, having a few scenes to create a memorable, if one-note character.
What makes this a film noir? Dr. Wood's story really isn't "noir." If stripped of the diamond smuggling/desperate criminals and losers story, it would be a pretty straight-forward medical thriller. It is even shot is a flatter, less stylistic manner, helping create the feeling of watching a documentary. The characters behave believably as city officials and health care professionals trying to halt the disease, first while withholding the truth form the public, then with a mass vaccination campaign.
Sheila's story is where the noir elements come in. Like all good femme fatales, she is beautiful and corrupt. She has no heart of gold; she really is a low life, corrupted by Matt. Their story is one of shady deals and, from Shiela's perspective, obsessive passion. Even after she finds out that Matt has slept with her sister, after her sister kills herself over the affair and Sheila has vowed to kill Matt in revenge she still calls out to him desperately, as he falls to his death. Obsession is a constant theme in noir; it is obsession that turns people away from a balanced "good" life.
It is also in Sheila's story that we get more of the traditional noir images. There is one stylized shot of her, emerging from her hotel at night, trying to avoid Agent Johnson, standing in the dark street, where everything is black except for her and the neon signs. She is a lone figure, trapped in a shadowy realm, where only the artificial lights promising tawdry entertainments burn through the darkness. Sheila's scenes are grittier, taking place in flophouses and bars, while Dr. Woods is in brightly-lit hospitals and offices, creating a visual environment for each character that reflects their characters. It is telling that the last scene featuring the two leads takes place at night, first in a dark office and then on a building ledge, where Wood has to rescue Sheila and bring her, if only briefly, out of her world and into his.
While the movie does suffer form the story issues already mentioned, The Killer That Stalked New York is worth watching. It's medical thriller story is well-developed and all of the characters, while mostly one-dimensional, benefit from a good cast. Check it out.
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