Based on a true story, this unsettling pandemic noir—directed by former Columbia second-unit director Earl McEvoy—follows a smuggler (Evelyn Keyes) on the run from the police, unknowingly spreading the smallpox virus across New York. Femme fatale as “patient zero”! Even before film noir became a recognized postwar cinematic trend, Columbia’s B-movies were steeped in shadowy hotel rooms and dingy nightclubs—places where dead bodies were no rarity. Columbia noir matured significantly in the late 1940s, and for this film, the studio brought in outside expertise in the form of producer Louis De Rochemont, known for his work on the wave of semi-documentary crime dramas at Fox. Often compared to Panic in the Streets (Elia Kazan), released the same year and also blending viral panic with postwar anxieties, The Killer That Stalked New York expands the noir framework—from the realm of personal and psychosexual tension to the collective dread of a city under invisible siege. There, it puts its finger squarely on the pulse of neo-pessimism.