Please Murder Me!

A wife kills her husband, while she carries on an affair with his best friend who also happens to be a defense attorney.

Inexpensive little programmer that would work just as well as a movie made for TV. Still it has a good tight script, with a few twists, and two fine actors. It's Raymond Burr a year before Perry Mason and I expect his courtroom scenes here did a lot to win him the lead in Mason. He carries them off with real authority. Then there's Lansbury as the calculating ice queen, and I stopped counting her smiles after one. She does make a convincing spider woman, however.

There's little action, while the courtroom scene takes up a lot of time. Still the plot line is an interesting one of intrigue and misdirection. So there are compensations to the talky format. One does have to wonder, however, about attorney Carlson's (Burr) iron sense of retribution. It appears a key plot contrivance, but an interesting one given the circumstances of his guilt. Should mention, at the same time, the presence of the great John Dehner in the key supporting role of county DA. His is a familiar face from that time, and I don't think he ever turned in a second-rate performance, no matter the role. Anyway, it's highly obscure little movie, but not without compensations.

The movie starts with Attorney Craig Carlson dictating the circumstances of his own upcoming murder into a tape recorder. Through a series of flashbacks we find out that he has a problem - his best friend's wife (Lansbury) comes to him for help in a divorce. Then another problem - he falls in love with her. Then another problem - she shoots her husband in self-defense. Now he has to defend her from a murder rap.

He gets her acquitted and they get engaged. All is well!! Of course not - why would the movie be over in twenty minutes? Let's just say that his tidy little circumstances rapidly grow complicated. His awareness of his changing situation, and his reaction to it, make for an interesting psychological development.

Burr was a good actor and the camera focuses in on his brooding face. It takes a while to find out that Lansbury's performance is more subtle than you might think.

The movie is economically directed - witness how the attorney picks up his gun in the opening shots. No dialog, just a brief sequence of visuals, and the plot advances. Well written, with good supporting performances, including a youngish and slim Denver Pyle. Nice unknown movie.

A mysterious stranger walks the seedy streets of a big city in a trench coat with the brim of his hat down low. The stranger stops in front of a business that -literally- has a PILE OF GUNS in the window display case and purchases a weapon. The opening credits explode onto the screen like gunshots as we see a close-up of the stranger loading bullets into the gun. Then the stranger goes into his dark office, sits at his desk, and records this story on a reel-to-reel tape recorder ...

"In exactly 55 minutes I will be dead!"

That stranger is Craig Carlson (Raymond Burr), Attorney at Law.

Then the Flashback: Craig is a very close friend to Joe Leeds (Dick Foran). They were war buddies, and after 15 years of friendship Craig must break the news to Joe that he is in love with his wife Myra (Angela Lansbury). Joe takes the news surprisingly well and tells Craig that he needs some time to sort things out in his head about how to move forward. Craig sees Myra later that evening and confesses what he did.

Then we see Joe arrive home to find Myra in bed reading a book. He enters, the door shuts, and we hear a gunshot! Myra is arrested for murder!

A good chunk of the film is about the court case. Naturally, Craig is Myra's lawyer and she is acquitted. The jury bought the idea that she shot her husband in self-defense.

Now that Myra and Craig are free to spend their lives together, Myra becomes curiously distant, and Craig discovers that Myra has a special friend ... the artist Carl Holt. So, maybe she was really guilty as charged and Craig saved her from the slammer?

Since Myra can't be tried twice for the same crime Craig hatches an elaborate plan to bring her to justice. And it's an unusual plan that he knows will end with his death.

This is a fairly good 50's Noir with an interesting ending.

Recommended!

Don't know where this picture originated. There is no studio at the beginning of the credits and it doesn't look like a TV production, although several of the players went on to successful careers in Television. Besides Burr and Lansbury, John Dehner and Denver Pyle did lots of TV work on many different shows. It also May have been a 'B' from an obscure studio and played with a weak 'A' picture.

In any case, the end result is a watchable film well-acted by some old pros and without any outlandish plot device acting as a Deus Ex Machina - surprisingly well-written. The engrossing storyline makes up for some dead time in the middle. Not a bad effort all around.

... and I say that because the actors, usually good in what they do, seem so flat here. That's usually the director's fault.

Attorney Craig Carlson (Raymond Burr) tells his best friend, successful businessman Joe Leeds (Dick Foran) that he and Joe's wife Myra (Angela Lansbury) are in love and that she wants a divorce so that she can marry Craig. Joe says he is surprised by this revelation and needs a few days to decide what to do. Those "few days" pass, and end with Joe lying dead on his bedroom floor, shot to death by Myra who claims self-defense, saying Joe got violent over the impending separation and attacked her. Craig defends her and gets her acquitted. But then somebody who worked for Joe hands Craig a letter, written by Joe the night that he died, and it puts an entirely different spin on the situation.

This was made the year before Burr became famous as Perry Mason, and there are things in common with this performance and his performance as Mason. His character is pensive but gloomy, befitting a noir. The courtroom scenes are the only place where Burr becomes animated, and I could see flashes of his Perry Mason character here. I really don't feel any chemistry between Burr and Lansbury like I did between Burr and Barbara Stanwyck in "Crime of Passion", made later the same year, but when the story moves past that, his grim conviction works very well. Part of this could be because Lansbury has a rather stern screen presence, or maybe it's the bad direction I mentioned. This one has flashes of Double Indemnity with a wonderfully brief ending that leaves much to the imagination.

This film is in the public domain and thus there are no restored copies that I've run across, thus the film is dark and at times the dialogue is tough to hear. Yet the rather intriguing premise of the script makes it probably worth your while. Also note that the supporting actors who appeared here - Dick Foran, John Dehner, Robert Griffin, and Denver Pyle - all made appearances on Perry Mason over the years. I wonder if there was a connection with this film?