Kuss vor dem Tode

Set against the backdrop of the shiny 1950s, "A Kiss Before Dying" is a taunt thriller that can arguably be voted the predecessor of many modern thrillers.

When the film starts, it looks like a glamorous, teenybopper flick. The opening song compliments this heavily, as does the numerous logos and neon colours used in the opening credits. Thinking back on it now, I find it to be a very unusual, brilliant style of film-making that isn't seen very often. It tricks the viewer into something it is not. It is not a 1950s college comedy, but a relentless thriller with lots of unexpected twists and turns. I thought this movie was going to be tame, being a 1950s film and all, but I was pleasantly surprised in how raw the plot was in some places.

A young Robert Wagner portrays Bud Corliss, a darkly handsome college student with an obsessive taste for riches and fine dining. Bud is a trouble 25 year-old man who still lives at home with his aging widowed mother (Mary Astor). He feels unfulfilled in his life and a little uncertain about his future. Dorothy Kingship (Joanne Woodward), a girl with whom he is having a secret relationship with, may be the only glimmer of hope that will lift him up out of his bland, disappointing life. Dorothy's father is incredibly wealthy, and Bud knows this. However, Dorie falls pregnant and Bud is threatened with disinheritance and the inevitable prospect of working as a gas station attendant in order to pay the bills for his wife a baby. This is where the film really takes off and we get to see how dark, desperate and evil Bud really is.

Bud devises a plan: stage his girlfriends suicide. The plan seems simple enough and actually works in Bud's favour. He is free of Dorie and the prospect of disinheritance, and is now able to court Dorie's older sister, Ellen (Virginia Leith), who is totally oblivious of the fact that Bud is Dorie's old flame (and murderer). Enter rookie detective Gordon Grant (Jeffrey Hunter), an intelligent young man who questions the circumstances surrounding Dorie's death, as well as the integrity of Ellen's new lover, Bud. He just has to put the gruesome pieces together to solve the complex puzzle of deceit and murder.

I recommend this movie to fans of the thriller genre, as well as those who want to take a trip down memory lane. Great film with top performance by all. Kudos to Jeffrey Hunter.

Bud Corliss (Robert Wagner) comforts his girlfriend Dorothy "Dory" Kingship (Joanne Woodward) who is utterly distraught after discovering her pregnancy. He's the gold digger and concerned only about her father's mining fortune. Her disinheritance is guaranteed and he is pushed to marry her. He plans to stage her suicide to get rid of both of his responsibilities. Dory has a sister in Ellen (Virginia Leith) and nobody in the family has ever met Bud.

It's an interesting noir story of the 50's. The Kingship family is the new wealth of the country while Bud represents the growing greed. He is the maniac pushed over the cliff. Robert Wagner has the leading man looks and he reminds me of Charlie Sheen if he turned fully to the dark side of Gordon Gekko. If there is a weakness in the movie, it's Ellen. She needs to be a younger sister rather than an older sister. She needs to be more innocent than Dory. That would elevate the danger and her innocence would allow better for his deception. Also, I don't see any great acting from Leith. The movie gets handed to her after the turn and she doesn't have the big screen power. She has a good look but she never took over. Overall, I love the story and the early execution is great. Wagner does really good work here.

If you're looking for an adaptation of the Ira Levin book--this isn't it. Also the book would be impossible to film. That aside this is OK murder mystery-thriller. I was lucky enough to see it letter-boxed on TCM--it looks great! However a film dealing with a psycho and murders he commits does NOT need a theme song! Acting is OK--not good, not bad, just OK. The cast is attractive, the film is beautiful to look at and it's an interesting diversion for 1 1/2 hours. So, an OK thriller--nothing really inventive or different about it. At all costs, AVOID the terrible 1991 remake! That one is a TOTAL waste of time!

He may not have been James Dean, but Robert Wagner delivers a career performance in this sorely neglected sleeper from 1956. The first half is a beautifully shaded dance of death as Wagner plots to rid himself of the inconveniently pregnant Joanne Woodward. He's all sincere insincerity from one rendezvous to the next, while she wants desperately to believe, even against all odds. Has there ever been a more cold-hearted manipulator of vulnerable feminine desires. Dory (Woodward) is all whiney expectations, while Wagner conceals ruthless ambition behind a pretty boy mask.

Director Gerd Oswald's staging of the first half is little short of brilliant, and had the filming been in appropriate black and white, a latter day noir classic would have resulted. Notice how subtly Woodward expects to be kissed atop the municipal building, the pinnacle of her girlish dreams, while Bud (Wagner) callously lights a cigarette, defiant of normal expectations. And what a gripping piece of morbid psychopathology is Wagner's slip-sliding through the chemistry lab as he prepares a toxic.potion for his lady love. Maybe in the last analysis, Bud's problem lies with his mother. The fixation is certainly not normal, as she senses in putting off his request for a "date". Yet Bud's social climbing ambitions are made tellingly clear that they are for mom as well as for himself.

Unfortunately, the second half reverts to standard Hollywood convention, the suspense subsiding along with the first-rate mood music. Putting a pipe in the callow Jeffrey Hunter's mouth and making him a college professor amounts to a crippling miscalculation on someone's part. Hunter's simply not the type, nor does he have the gravitas to carry the plot forward. The end result is a hybrid of first-half brilliance and second-half mediocrity. Too bad. The ending is appropriate, however, as the monster truck bears down like the hand of pre-destination that Bud should have taken note of in that literature class. There is a point to Dory's unfortunate life, after all.

A scheming college guy, played by a youthful Robert Wagner, tries to marry into wealth. Complications result in murder. Because of the murder angle, and because the plot centers on Wagner's sly and cunning character, the film reminds me a little of "Dial M For Murder". But, to its credit, "A Kiss Before Dying" has a darker, more brooding, noir-like quality, helped along by a 50's music score that is jazzy and slightly mournful.

Wagner's acting, if not Oscar-worthy, is at least acceptable. But Jeffrey Hunter is miscast, and therefore not convincing, as the pipe-smoking professor/detective. And Joanne Woodward gives a clinging, and altogether too whiny, performance, as the damsel in distress. A couple of interesting, if somewhat implausible, plot twists add impact to the screenplay. The film's conclusion, however, is predictable and just a tad melodramatic.

Overall, "A Kiss Before Dying" comes across as a stylish, very 1950ish, wanna-be classic. It doesn't quite succeed, but is nonetheless worth watching at least once, especially for viewers who like dark, brooding, twist-laden thrillers.