Murder by Proxy

This is a little British murder mystery, not a noir. The main character is a nice shlub, not a tough guy. There is very little tension or menace and certainly not any cynicism or existential despair. The dialog and bits of business are pretty funny and practically everyone in the film, including the villain, seems basically likable. Dane Clark does a very good job, although he will go on to do better. The plot offers a steady diet of red herring, but plot is not this film's strong suit. The whole thing is so likable that you may find yourself cringing that the plot and twists and turns seem so aimless and gratuitous, but it doesn't pretend to be more than a grade B movie with some good acting and good dialog.

The film begins with Dane Clark being offered a strange marriage proposal from a woman he just met. Not only that, she offers this drunk guy 500 pounds to do the deed! However, upon waking up the next morning, he finds he's implicated with murder and there's no trace of the lady! So, it's up to tough-guy Clark to investigate and clear his name.

Most fans of Film Noir will be surprised to hear that the British (not to mention, the French) made quite a few of these in the 1950s. Oddly, the Brit Noir films were made by Hammer Studios--the same folks who made tons of Dracula, Frankenstein and Mummy films from the late 50s to the mid 1970s! And, oddly, this film is directed by the studio's foremost monster film director, Terence Fisher.

Overall, while this is far from a great film, it does stack up pretty well with the average American example, though I will admit that this film does have a few too many twists and turns (particularly for the character of Phyllis Brunner).

As was common in the fifties, a jobbing American B-lister was brought over to add a bit of box office to a mid-budget British crime thriller. This time it was Dane Clark who portrays the down at heel "Morrow". In a bar he meets the glamorous "Phyllis Brunner" (Belinda Lee) who gets him a bit drunk then offers him £500 to marry her. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he acquiesces to this perfectly reasonable demand from a women he had known for four hours (?!) but gets quite a shock when he wakes up next day, somewhat thick headed, in an artist's studio covered in blood. Whose blood? It does not take him long to discover that his brand new father-in-law was murdered less that 12 hours earlier and that he is the prime suspect. Can he fathom out what happened before the police hear - and obviously don't believe - his story? Clark is actually not bad, here, but the plot is far too unnecessarily complicated - it could easily trip over it's own cloak and stab itself with it's own dagger - and that rather robs it of any punch. It's also really quite slow, too - quite a few scenes that add little and further decelerate the story. Not bad, but too long and never something you will remember watching.

Yes the cited user makes a brave attempt to explain this crime drama plot filmed in London in 1954.I was familiar with Dane Clark after watching him in "Highly Dangerous" (1950) with Margaret Lockwood and the actor who played the lawyer by watching "Angels One Five" when he played a fighter squadron leader in a very different role.Of course the tragic actress Belinda Lee (1936-1961) was not long on this earth losing her life in a motor accident in the US but she provides the film with the necessary eye candy.

Obviously the producers were influenced by American Film Noirs of the 1940s e.g. "The Big Sleep" and make a matching brave attempt at this sort of drama for the Uk market.Incidentally I heard that 1954 was the most unremarkable year in recent history when nothing much happened of shattering world importance!I rated it 6/10 along with the IMDb.com average rating.

Down on his luck, and stranger in town, Casey Morrow, meets a beautiful young woman, and agrees to marry her for £500.

I'm not sure I'd have needed the fee to have agreed to marry Belinda Lee, she was genuinely jaw dropping here, not just that she steals the show with a killer performance.

My title may be a a little too far, but when you try to put the various pieces of the plot together, it genuinely doesn't make any sense, the behaviours of the character, their actions and motives, make no sense, and as for the killer's identity, that truly does come straight out of left field.

Despite the plot, it's enjoyable enough, it's atmospheric, and for a British noise, it actually looks impressive, even to this day.

One day I'll rewatch it, and maybe try to interpret the plot better, but as it stands, it's the main detractor here, 6/10.