Watch The Tattooed Stranger For Free

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Purely Joyful Movie!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

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.

I watched this the day after NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH (1948) because it has a similar reputation for seediness; the result, however, is even more modest and, frankly, negligible (while included among the 250 Quintessential Noirs, several titles that did not make the list were obviously more deserving of a place). Though RKO made some of the best noirs, this is a cut-rate production with a totally unfamiliar cast and crew! The title could allude to either the female victim (a bigamist for the purposes of insurance fraud) or her murderer (who, however, remains a cipher to the very end, thus ineffective). The protagonists are a seasoned cop and his rookie partner which, typically, emerges a bumpy but ultimately mutually affectionate partnership; also on hand is an attractive female botanist who obviously catches the young man's attention. Incidentally, the film's most noteworthy elements – apart from adopting hilarious nick-names such as "Billy Alcohol" and "The Electric Rembrandt" for its more colorful characters! – are the rarity (for this time in American cinema) of watching a meticulous scene-of-the crime investigation, as well as tattoo-painting and gravestone-carving!

The Tattooed Stranger was another of those rare B-movies that BBC2 screened over Christmas/New Year 2005-2006. See also They Live By Night and The Brighton Strangler.In this one, a man walking his dog in Central Park comes across an abandoned car and discovers a dead woman inside. She was shot and police then try to identify her with only a tattoo as the main clue. After being identified, the murderer is discovered and is shot in the shootout at the end.Most of this movie was shot on location in and around New York, so we get to see some areas of the city we don't normally see, especially the back streets.Mostly unknowns are in the cast, with John Miles getting top billing.The Tattooed Stranger is worth seeking out. Excellent but rather obscure.Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

Edward Montagne's Tattooed Stranger is supposed to play like a crime thriller with a little film noir mixed in for flavor. Instead, it's a poorly acted, witless look into low budget and uninspired film making. The plot is absurd and the acting excruciatingly stiff and amateurish. John Miles, who had a rather thin resume in the industry, grins and guffaws throughout, and everyone else acts with the same verve as characters in a government-made filmstrip about driver safety. The movie anticipates shows like 'Leave it to Beaver' and 'Father Knows Best' in its unnaturally wholesome view of New York in 1950. Why, the viewer doesn't even get to see anyone light up a cig until some shapely woman is interviewed in a flophouse halfway through the movie. The only thing the movie has going for it (besides its brevity) is the excellent location shots coordinated by William Steiner. The low budget of the film works in the cinematographer's favor, as the viewer is treated to well-framed shots of New York City's interiors and expansive exteriors. Unless you wish to enjoy the film for the choice of settings and camera angles, I suggest watching practically any other movie.