The sidewalks of New Orleans are lousy with fear, spawned by an illegal alien lying dead in a gutter and carrying bubonic plague from a rat-infested ship; and spread by a band of rodent-like hoodlums led by psychopath Jack Palance and his fawning sidekick Zero Mostel, who have murdered the man over a card game. Richard Widmark is the Public Health doctor who descends into the dockside underworld to track down the plague-exposed thugs. He has only 48 hours, and his job is made more difficult by official resistance and the suspicions of a wary, lower-class community, some of whom have been exposed themselves. Xenophobia is the ironic trick-card here: undue interest on the part of the cops over the death of an alien tips off the murderers. Filled with telling detail, Elia Kazan's entry into the postwar film noir genre combines the documentary realism of the Hathaway House on 92nd Street tradition, with a bravura style that anticipates Fuller's Pickup on South Street.