A Kiss Before Dying
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Movie Reviews of A Kiss Before Dying
Movie Review: A nasty little gem
Summary: 4 Stars
Stunningly photographed in rich, deep technicolor, and with the delicious contrast between the sweet surface of the privileged white middle classes in the fifties and the poisonous, murderous greed of some young, imperiousness and stupidity of some parents, and the shallowness of a gross materialistic society wallowing in its consumption of goods, it is a little gem worthy of comparison to Hitchcock. A film to be relished.Movie Review: KISS BEFORE DYING
Summary: 4 Stars
Great fun! I enjoyed so much to see Bob Wagner so young and scary. Jeff Hunter's part is so small(sorry!). After all other comments I just want to inform future buyers that the DVD has both versions of the movie (standard and widescreen)something to consider when you still don't have a Widescreen TV but is planning to buy one soon. Worth every cent. Buy it!Movie Review: Core evil defined by greed
Summary: 4 Stars
Greed and evil is dripping from the screen like frosting colors melting in the sun. Watch out for the dead eyes. They will chill you to the core.Movie Review: Psychopath Entwined With Two Sisters in Effective Thriller
Summary: 3 Stars
This movie is a vivid reminder of the type of Baroque psychodrama/thriller Hollywood produced with great relish in the 1950's, and now it has been released on DVD. At the forefront back then was German-born filmmaker Douglas Sirk, whose turgid Technicolor melodramas ("Magnificent Obsession", "Imitation of Life" among others) served as inspiration for Todd Haynes' recent critical hit, "Far From Heaven", with Julianne Moore. Another contributor to this genre was director Gerd Oswald, who filmed an early Ira Levin book (his later works include "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Stepford Wives") in 1956 and manages to capture all the lurid elements and Freudian pop sensibilities that make this good fun to watch.
A very young and dapper Robert Wagner plays a very cool and collected psychopath named Budd Corliss, who impregnates his naive girlfriend, Dorothy, played by an ingenuous Joanne Woodward in only her second film. That accident virtually guarantees her disinheritance from her wealthy, taciturn father, and so Budd spends the first half of the story plotting her murder ensuring her death will look like a suicide. The story telegraphs the inevitable event for quite a while, and the scenes that lead to it are tensely effective culminating in a camera-savvy push from a rooftop that is visually stunning. Similar to Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" (and predating that classic by four years), the story shifts perspective to her sister Ellen and a detective who try to put the pieces together to figure out who murdered Dorothy. The twists in this part of the film include a tennis pro who is too helpful to Ellen for his own good, and Ellen herself, ignorant of Budd's previous relationship with Dorothy, begins an affair with Budd. Contrived? You bet. But the story is filled with such tension and twists that it is difficult to pull away once you get hooked.
Wagner has never been the most resourceful of actors, but he nails this part with his impassive detachment, an interesting precursor to Matt Damon's Tom Ripley. Woodward makes an impression, but she is really only called upon to play a smitten coed you know will not survive. A rather wooden contract player named Virginia Leith plays Ellen in a manner that reminded me of Cary Grant's honey-voiced actress wife, Betsy Drake. Jeffrey Hunter seems rather confused playing the detective, and Mary Astor is sadly given very little to do as Budd's subtly grasping mother (I wish they fleshed this aspect out more to explain Budd's psychosis). Of course, it all ends precariously on the ledge of a limestone mine, as Ellen fights off Budd to save her own life. Avoid the 1991 remake with Matt Dillon and Sean Young unbelievably playing both sisters, as this is the one that will provide you with silly melodramatic fun.
Movie Review: WASTED WOODWARD
Summary: 3 Stars
The always superb Joanne Woodward is seen all too briefly in this 1956 pre-fame movie. She was shown to much better advantage the same year in "Count Three and Pray". Here, the wonderful Joanne is the pregnant victim to Robert Wagner, a self-stylized gold digger. First he tries to push her down a flight of stars at the college stadium, then poison her. He forces her to translate a Spanish to English note that reads as a suicide letter and mails it off, thinking he has succeeded killing her with "super potent vitamins". Wen she shows up to class, he becomes unglued. He has mailed the death note out to her wealthy father. He concocts a scheme to marry her and the couple go to the tallest building in town deliberately early before the license bureau is open. Woodward adores him and agrees to go on the roof of the 12 story building where Wagner proceeds to push her off. Then I lost interest. Woodward would have been seen to better advantage in the female lead, the sister played by Virgina Leith. And who is she? She would have been believable as Wagner's mother, played by the often wasted but always magnificent Mary Astor. Here again, two talents never really given the screen time to enthrall you. But in Woodward's (and Astor's) short performances, they are the only redeeming value in this classic Ira Levin novella. This is far superior to the remake, but Wagner is just too much of a "pretty boy" to play a cold blooded cad and his star presence isn't strong enough to hold the picture on the merits of his performance.
Fortunately for the great Woodward, the next year she would win an Leading Female Oscar (among other awards) for "The Three Faces of Eve" in a bravura performance (originally turned down by Susan Hayward), and would become a household name. And her atrocious short hair in this movie does not do her beauty justice. I have watched several pre-fame performances by this icon, and in her short third of this movie, she captivates the audience.
This could have been a better movie if she had more screen time. It had all the makings of a wonderful flick, but the flaws of some of the other performers mar what could have been a great movie. It is still rightfully considered a cult classic, but Wagner is way out of his league here.
Terry D. Robertson
author of FILL MY EYES
THE BACKSIDE OF YESTERDAY