While the City Sleeps

When the head of a newspaper empire dies, control of the business passes to his son Walter, who has no intention of running it himself. He offers the general manager's job to whichever of his executives can deliver an exclusive on the serial killer terrorising the city, a murderer who leaves messages written in lipstick. A ruthless contest follows among the paper's senior men, with reporters, editors and a police lieutenant caught up in the scramble for the story.

Fritz Lang directed this 1956 American crime drama, the twenty-third of the twenty-four films he made, following Human Desire and preceding The Indian Tomb. Casey Robinson wrote the screenplay, and Bert E. Friedlob produced for RKO Radio Pictures and Bert E. Friedlob Productions. Dana Andrews plays reporter Edward Mobley, with Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Howard Duff, Thomas Mitchell and Vincent Price among the principal cast; thirty-seven performers are credited.

The film runs 100 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.9 from roughly 7,800 votes, and on TMDB it also stands at 6.9, from around 150 votes. A critics' rating of 7.7 from twenty-three reviews places it somewhat higher than the audience scores.