A Blueprint for Murder

... that probably being that you just have to hope things go your way in a couple of categories. First, you need to be an upstanding member of the community - but not too upstanding so that you are a target for some ambitious D.A. Second, you need to commit the crime in a jurisdiction where either the police are too lazy or too busy to look past the superficial details, where they accept whatever an overworked coroner says - accident, suicide, some sudden illness. Third, and this is where the killer in this film does not luck out, you need to make sure the grieving relatives are not the inquisitive persistent type, respectable and able to get the attention of those in charge of criminal investigations.

Enter Whitney 'Cam' Cameron (Joseph Cotten), who makes a darned good villain as well as a protagonist, but here he's the good guy - or at least so he says. He lost his brother suddenly to encephalitis several years before, and now his niece has also died suddenly. The random remarks of Cam's little nephew, Cam's own inquisitive mind, and the fact that his close friend's wife is a writer of murder mysteries gets Cam suspecting his late brother's wife Lynn of murder. I'll let you see how everything unwinds yourself and who is brought to justice. Cotten narrates for almost the entire film, since he is trying to convince himself this woman is guilty even as he tries to prove her guilt to others - he has always liked her since his brother married her after the death of his first wife, thought she was a good stepmother to his brother's kids, and doesn't want to believe something so hideous, but he has to protect his brother's one surviving child, his nephew - again, so he says.

One thing that has changed since 1953, besides the fact that fashionable ladies and gents all wore hats ,is that a person could die in the hospital - quite possibly due to a fatal mix up by the hospital pharmacy - and that an investigating relative would be met by cooperative hospital personnel and not by an army of stonewalling attorneys and form letters. At least, that's one thing I noticed as Cam went about the hospital where his niece died trying to get the facts.

This is a very good mystery, yet Fox relegated it to half a bill on a Midnight Movie DVD. Give it a chance. It is not the fare usually associated with Midnight Movies - matrons baking cookies by day and turned ax murderer by night, wildlife run amok due to a nuclear blast, etc. Recommended.

This is a superb and sophisticated murder mystery. Joseph Cotten is in peak form as the lead man, Whitney Cameron, who is called to the bedside of his young niece, who is dying in hospital. The child dies of mysterious convulsions, enigmatically and inexplicably crying out: 'Don't touch my feet!' The plot thickens from there, and the strange cry is discovered to have a meaning after all. This is a first rate early fifties noir with Cotton, Jean Peters as his sister-in-law, and Gary Merrill as his lawyer friend. It is excellently directed by Andrew Stone and should be better known than it is. The story is cleverly developed, and the mystery lasts up until the very end of the film. The question is: who poisoned the niece with strychnine, and why? And who will be next? Cotton is urbane, reassuring, and very solid in the main role. Jean Peters is rather more arch than usual, with a character portrayal which is intentionally ambivalent, just to keep us all guessing. One does not know whether she is a femme fatale or not, and the whole point is that no one knows, even within the story. This is a most ingenious whodunit which will not disappoint any viewer.

Most of this movie is a "did-she-or-didn't-she-do it?" story. Two family members have been poisoned and it looks like the mother, "Lynne Cameron" (Jean Peters) is the killer, but it's hard to prove. As the film goes on, one has more and more doubts whether she did it. Perhaps the innocent-sounding "Uncle Cam" (Joseph Cotten) is the killer. Hmmmm.....which one is it? Was it the pretty Peters or Cotten?

For most of the short movie, it was entertaining. It began to drag a bit in the last third but the film, since it is short, should keep your interest enough to find out who's the killer and how she-or-he did it.

I agree with those posters who felt the ending was a bit disappointing. I was looking for something a little more clever than was presented.

I'd also liked to have seen more scenes with the two supporting actors: Catherine McLeod and Gary Merrill. Both actors were fascinating. McLeod played "Maggie Sargent," the first character in here to suspect foul play after a child's death. Merrill played her husband, "Fred." He also was "Cam's" lawyer.

McLeod is deceptively good-looking and I wish I could see more things she did, but her IMDb resume indicates she mainly acted on television in the 1950s.

Overall, this is definitely worth one viewing. It is usually worth seeing the sexy Peters in her prime before she went into retirement a few years later. She did four films in 1953 and three more the next year, several of them being good film noirs ("Pickup On South Street" and "Niagara.")

Rightly released on DVD in a double-bill format, for which it was clearly intended for the bigger screen, and very plainly directed by Andrew Stone, this is nevertheless a gripping thriller which keeps one guessing until the very end. Joseph Cotten had some form as a murderer in previous films and is sufficiently shifty to suggest that he might be one now. In my youth I fancied Jean Peters, a beauty with a brain, and was grieved when she succumbed to Howard Hughes. Here she is excellent as the presumed femme fatale. Gary Merrill is wasted, but Catherine McLeod is fun as his astute wife. The sets are obviously from studio stock, but this hardly matters: this is an Agatha Christie style nail-biter and it hits the spot!

I agree with the viewer above who was disppointed in the ending. The acting overall was fine, but the plot was too disjointed and nonsensical in parts. My feeling is that the plot shifted whenever necessary to get the film to the next scene - dragging along the viewer whether it's a logical shift or not. For instance, at the beginning of the movie (not ruining anything for viewers!) Joseph Cotton approaches a doctor and asks about performing an autopsy - which would have ended the movie then and there. But no, the doctor says that he doesn't want to get involved, and the idea of an autopsy simply ends on that note. Cotten basically says, "Well OK" and the movie moves on to the next scene. At least the screenwriters could have come up with SOME other excuse to prevent an autopsy from occurring.... Anyway, there are irksome things like that throughout, but if you can ignore them, you can enjoy. As for the ending, it's a bit dull and nonsensical, again, and ends too abruptly.