AllMovie

Killer by Night is reminiscent of such early 1950s film noir exercises as The Killer That Stalked New York and Panic in the Streets. The police of a large city are plagued with two crises at once: A diphtheria epidemic and a triple murderer. With the help of health officials Robert Wagner and Diane Baker the authorities narrow down the source of both the disease and the murders as being the selfsame person. The problem: To track him down with only a skeleton police force at hand. Killer by Night manages to create a claustrophobic, paranoid atmosphere with only a minimum of 1970s-style camera trickery.