Murder Without Crime

Dennis Price is a landlord by necessity, that is, he is forced to rent out rooms in his West End mansion and has a bickering couple (Derek Farr and Patricia Plunkett) upstairs. They are having an argument and she decides to leave him. After she leaves, he decides to drown his sorrows at a nearby bar where he meets Grena (Joan Dowling), a tart who lives on the same block.

Back at her place and very drunk, he decides he'd rather just go home, which infuriates her. She ends up following him home and they have a loud argument which turns physical and which Price downstairs can hear. Plunkett changes her mind and calls home in the middle of the mayhem. Grena has been killed.

What ensues is a cat-and-mouse game as Price enters the gargoyle-filled apartment, guesses what has happened, and decides to blackmail Farr.

Excellent thriller with more than a few surprises in the plot. The four actors are all excellent with Price and Dowling taking top honors. Also of note are the incredibly ugly Victorian apartment and lighting that creates a room of monstrous shadows and shapes.

The opening and closing narration is a little weird, but don't let it put you off this tidy thriller.

A rather unrelatable and over-emoting Derek Farr (Stephen) has a row with his wife Patricia Plunkett (Jan) which causes her to storm off to stay with a friend. Only she doesn't. She ends up staying at a hotel around the corner. Meanwhile, Farr goes out to a club with his landlord Dennis Price (Matthew) where Farr meets with good-time girl Joan Dowling (Grena). God knows why but Dowling agrees to go home with Farr! This won't look good if Plunkett returns, which is what she does. However, something is not quite right. Farr is extra jumpy and still generally unpleasant whilst landlord Price is ever present with his witty and suspicious insinuations as to where Dowling may be. Where is Dowling? She has disappeared and there is a piece of furniture - an ottoman chest - which takes on a central role. Surely not! Well, we have all seen Farr do it.

The two best characters are Dowling and Price and the apartment is richly decorated with atmospheric furniture which adds to the spooky feel to the film. It's an entertaining thriller that keeps up the suspense and throws in some surprises along the way. The film has similarities to "Rope" (1948) and "Laura" (1944).

Derek Farr and Patricia Plunkett quarrel. She walks out. In a lather, Farr goes to a nearby bar, picks up Joan Dowling, goes to her home, and gets cold feet. She follows him home. They quarrel, and he strikes her. She's dead. But creepy landlord Derek Price has heard the fuss, and keeps popping in, to hint at.... something.

I was put off by the fast-talking, jovial narrator who kicks off the entire proceedings and injects some comments throughout. I also thought that Louis Levy's score was lush and intrusive, and William McLeod's zooming, fish-eyed cinematography put this way over the top. This was writer J. Lee Thompson's first movie as director, and it was based on his play DOUBLE ERROR, which had first been filmed in 1937 as THE PRICE OF FOLLY. Clearly he was intent on keeping this as far away from a polite proscenium arch as possible, with the result that technique overwhelms everything and everyone, except for Dennis Price; his character might as well be named D'Ascoyne and he's what keeps this movie afloat.

Thompson went on to have a decent international career as a movie director that lasted 35 years. He ended it with a series of Charles Bronson movies that declined in quality through KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS. He died in 2002, aged 88.

The first part of the movie is handicapped by an excess of voice over ;they are all the more pointless since there are only four characters in a movie which often looks like filmed stage production.

Obviously influenced by Hitchcock's "Rope" (1948) , Jack Lee Thompson (whose film was his debut) lacks his colleague's finesse and virtuosity ; but by the second half, the movie hits its stride ,and becomes a cat-and-mouse play. And he is helped by Dennis Price's outstanding performance,;the actor's face,often filmed in close shot ,reflects hatred,envy ,perversity ;unhappy , he really wants to prevent his fellow men from being happy themselves. Watch it for him!