He Walked By Night (1948)

Taken from actual case files, the Los Angeles police department painstakingly track down an elusive thief and cop killer (Richard Basehart) who seems to have the ability to vanish into thin air. Can they catch him before he kills again? Directed by Alfred Werker (REPEAT PERFORMANCE), this poverty row police procedural is considered a sleeper in the film noir genre and is greatly admired by noir enthusiasts. But outside of the superb B&W atmospheric cinematography (done almost entirely on the streets of Los Angeles, this was not a studio movie) of John Alton (ELMER GANTRY), I found this on the dullish side. There's a stripped down quality to the film with no room for anything that doesn't advance the plot and that includes any sort of character development. We're never given any clue as to the killer's motivations, he's just a killing machine. Fortunately, Basehart is a good enough actor to infuse his underwritten part with a suggestion of a sociopath but it's not in the writing. Reputedly it influenced Jack Webb (who plays a forensic expert) to create the TV series DRAGNET. With Scott Brady, Whit Bissell, Roy Roberts, Dorothy Adams and John Dehner.