Why Must I Die

This low budget independent film produced by Terry Moore is a plea against capital punishment. Producer Moore was able to get fellow contemporary star Debra Paget in this movie with her as they play a pair of knockabout girls who've definitely seen the seamier side of life. The only problem is that Moore winds up sitting on death row for a murder that Paget committed.

Moore was a small time crook herself, but she grows tired of the life and wants to make a clean break from it. She goes to work for club owners Robert Shayne and Phil Harvey as a singer. But old friends like Lionel Ames whom she was an accomplice with in pulling several jobs follow her.

Now Ames has Debra Paget in tow and she's one hard bitten dame that makes Moore look like Mary Poppins. The two pull a job on the club Moore was singing at and beautifully frame her for the robbery. The problem is that Paget kills Harvey and Moore fits that frame too.

As for the rest of it, all I can say is that for such hard bitten dame Paget folds easily enough with a little pressure. If you've seen Susan Hayward in I Want To Live you can figure out where the story takes us.

Hayward's performance in that is one of those once in a lifetime achievements by a player that are impossible to duplicate. That being said, plenty try and Terry Moore was one of them.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the financing for this low budget film was helped along a little by Howard Hughes. Terry was his main squeeze, but Hughes would have done this one from petty cash.

Why Must I Die is sincere enough, but it's also trashy and exploitive.

It's incredible to see poor Roy Del Ruth, this Warner Bros director, who was in charge of many movies, mostly musicals during the forties and thirties, and also comedies, the first version of the MALTESE FALCON, this director nearly as famous as Lloyd Bacon finishing his career at American International Pictures. But don't musinderstand me, this latest production company was not Monogram nor Poverty Row studio either, it was the Roger Corman and Samuel Z Arkoff - James Nicholson prestigious company. But I am still astonished; anyway this very drama which looks like Robert Wise's I WANT TO DIE - lady in death row - is still a good film to discover, but certainly not the same Roy Del Ruth from the Busby Berkeley golden years period.

"Why Must I Die?" is a movie with a great title...but ultimately it's just a bad film...mostly due to a script that seems in need of a re-write.

Terry Moore plays Lois King, a woman who wants to make her living as a lounge singer. It's tough at first, but eventually she hits it big. But when this happens, an old boyfriend from her dark past arrives and announces that she's going to help him and his new girlfriend with a caper. Her actions from here on really make no sense and she ultimately arrives on death row.

The writing is poor. The acting, at times, is brash and anything but subtle. But the film also doesn't try very hard to be good or sophisticated and is a poor B-movie with little to recommend it.