At one point we do see Lorre nearly salivating at the sight of a child's reflection in the window of a shop he's looking into, and at another, him trying to lure in his next victim, but he's simply not on-screen enough. Instead, he shows us the surveillance network of beggars and focuses too much on procedure. Unfortunately the movie gets a little bogged down in its middle portion, when Lang could have shown us other sinister acts from Lorre or at built some type of backstory in his characters.

He does do a fantastic job at establishing a dark feel to the film throughout, and is brilliant when he cuts the sound a few times, letting the action speak for itself, which is heightened because of the darkness of it all. The police and mob are barely distinguishable as they both discuss the matter over cigars and alcohol in separate meetings as Lang flips back and forth between them, and perhaps that's one of his larger points about Germany at the time.

In a very heavy-handed way they begin putting heat on the street and in pubs, asking for papers and rounding people up for little reason, motivating an organized crime ring to get involved to find the killer themselves and get things back to normal. While the police are shown at work with some early examples of forensics - fingerprints, handwriting analysis, and sifting through physical evidence in concentric circles around the crime scene - the overall picture of them is unflattering. Peter Lorre is brilliant in the role of the killer, setting the tone early on as director Fritz Lang cuts to him looking in the mirror, and, like a child, distorting his face to look monstrous, while the police are talking about the psychological profile of a killer. The first question you might find yourself asking while watching this movie is just where the hell is the 'stranger danger'? Despite the news of a serial killer preying on children in the news for a long time, we still see children on the street alone, and one easily lured in with candy and treats.

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