Adapted from the same novel as Henri-Georges Clouzot’s L’assassin habite… au 21 (1942) from six years earlier, Carlos Hugo Christensen’s La muerte camina en la lluvia (US: Death Walks in the Rain) is a form of closed-door whodunit in which the colorful tenants of a Gothic-style boarding house learn that one of them is Sr. Lopez, a maniac who’s murdering women on the streets on rainy nights. Moving the setting from Paris to Buenos Aires, Christensen’s film maintains the occasional silliness that blooms in the household of motley suspects but adds a deeper layer of visual noir through misty nighttime exteriors, unusual camera angles, and extreme closeups. Argentinian starlet Olga Zubarry stars as tenant Lila Espinoza, a young writer and advertising professional dating Lucho Rivas (Horacio Peterson), the new editor in chief of a local newspaper who is determined to protect Lila, find the killer, and break a giant scoop. The tenants, aka suspects, include a painter (an expressionist, of course), a watchmaker, a magician, a military doctor, an Uruguayan professor, a Russian count, and a servant girl named Good Luck. Christensen maintains lightning-speed pacing throughout, even during pivotal confrontations like the dinner revelation, Rivas’ sidewalk interview with the magician, and the finale on the staircase.