Trunk Crime

A slightly disturbed loner (Manning Whiley) and disturbed student plots to murder athe ringleader of fellow student (Michael Drake) bullies in his house and bury the body in a trunk.

Released in the US as DESIGN FOR MURDER, the first feature (albeit short) film by the Boulting brothers is an at times tense grand guignol thriller cheap quickly shot briskly.

This is an odd little hybrid - a very early production by the Boulting brothers that starts off as a very effective piece of revenge/horror and then spends most of its second half running through various stratagems that attempt to reveal or conceal respectively the contents of the eponymous trunk. The final twist, given the preceding actions of the characters, is really a little too hard to credit, although it's not inherently impossible in the plot; one does get the impression that the script was attempting to milk its thrills for all that it was worth in two mutually incompatible directions.

However, on the whole it's pretty psychologically effective. Manning Whiley does a good job throughout most of the film as the nervy victim/protagonist, while Michael Drake is very good as his casual tormentor. Barbara Everest does well as the managing female who manages to get herself in over her head, and Hay Petrie makes an appearance in one of his many character roles.

And considering that the entire film was shot in twelve days on a low budget, and that it was the first feature-length picture (if barely that, at 50 minutes) that Roy and John Boulting had as yet produced, this is certainly a very promising debut; its favourable critical reception would help lead to the Boultings' first major production "Pastor Hall".

I have long held Director Roy Boulting in great respect, wonderful craftsman that he was. Perhaps because TRUNK CRIME was first released in 1939, early in his career and just prior to the start of World War II, you get the feeling that the group of students is a rather well-off, fun seeking and even malicious lot.

For a British film shot in 1939, TRUNK CRIME shows a remarkable level of social hysteria, violent misfits, and a revengeful male lead who makes heavy weather of his performance, and failed to look convincing. At any rate. He stuffs his longstanding former classmate in a trunk and travels with the body to some supposedly inconspicuous site, nothing less than a highrise apartment in a posh hotel.

I found the story engrossing to start off with, but before long it lost touch with reality, over the top charactersengaging in excessive dialogue. Only 49 minutes long, I but doubt I will rewatch it.

Everyone is about to graduate, so his fellow collegians invade Manning Whiley's rooms, destroy his possession and go off to get even more drunk. Whiley decides to stick ringleader Michael Drake in a trunk and sink him in the pits and dykes around his country cottage. Unfortunately for his plans, it seems the world decides to come visit him in his murderous solitude.

Roy Boulting reportedly shot this quota quickie in twelve days, and the audience can see it's his work. The nasty sense of humor he and twin brother John exhibited in their farces of the late 1950s is evident, particularly in the character of Hay Petrie as a garrulous old gaffer who keeps showing up to offer provisions for Whiley's breakfast. The macabre glee with which the movie proceeds slides uneasily into a melodramatic exposition of madness late in the show, spoiling the effect a bit, but the first three-quarters of the movie are excellent and the ending doesn't get anywhere near wrecking the movie.

Repeatedly bullied, and then ultimately burglarised, beaten, and his home ransacked by a group of thugs, Bentley plots revenge. He kidnaps the ringleader, poisons him to paralyze him, puts him into a trunk, and plans to dispose of him, while still alive, in a muddy swamp. But nothing goes according to plans: visitors intruding at his house, bad weather, and one final (and wholly unbelievable) twist stand in his way of disposing of the guy in the trunk.

Shades of Poe's Premature Burial are mixed with several ideas which could have influenced Hitchcock's Rope, and it all starts out well, with a well done scene of the victim's home being ransacked, and the suspense of the poisoning scene- but the film fizzles away after the first half, and the entire thing is capped with a ridiculously contrived happy ending; a flat finish to a film which, in the hands of Hitchcock, might have been a classic.

Good performance by the dog, too.