A Blueprint for Murder (1953)

Before I get into the review at hand let me explain my absence as I haven't really had the time and whatnot to watch and review movies however in light of this i've found a few ways to make this blog even better as i've figured out how to make screencaps and thus starting soon you'll be seeing my own screencaps of the flicks i've been watching. I won't be continuing the X-Men retrospective for a couple or so weeks for various reasons but i'll continue to do some classic movies and of course the Godzilla stuff.

A Blueprint for Murder (1953)

Plot Summary

Whitney 'Cam' Cameron (Joseph Cotton) returns to Manhattan to visit his widowed sister-in-law Lynn (Jean Peters) and her stepchildren, his niece and nephew. His niece has suddenly fallen ill with a mysterious malady whose symptoms mirror those of his deceased brother. After being hospitalized, the girl seems to be rallying but quickly takes a turn for the worse and dies from the undiagnosed illness. Cam's friend and lawyer Fred Sargent (Gary Merrill) and his wife Maggie (Catherine McLeod) believe that the symptoms may suggest strychnine poisoning, and as Lynn stands to inherit a fortune if nephew Doug dies also, Cam now views her with suspicion. Despite circumstantial evidence that she murdered her step-daughter, Lynn is released for insufficient cause. When she tells him that she intends to take Doug to Europe, Cam realizes that desperate measures are needed if he is to save the boy's life

This is a pretty interesting little forgotten noir that really tells a very good "did she or didn't she?" type of mystery. It helps to lend credence to the mystery by having Joseph Cotton in the lead as he plays the leading man role quite well but his looks and demeanor also make him very capable of being a wolf in sheep's clothing. The movie is a bit odd in how its done as it pretty much follows the form and acting style of most noirs and '50s movies but once we get into the middle section with the police detectives investigating it quickly turns into a documentary style with almost  method type acting from the head detective in various scenes where he ushers Cotton and Merrill around the offices explaining what's going on in the case and such. There's even a moment where one of the other detectives is talking and the head detective leans over a nearby fountain taking a gulp of water!

This sense of realism was something that lent credibility to the murder investigation and the interrogation scene when all the evidence seem to point against Peters in the murder of the stepdaughter. Jean Peters is GREAT in her role. She was a very sexy actress back in the day and was involved in a few film noirs before retiring from the acting business. Here's a screen of her at her sexiest with Cotton in the movie:

BTW some trivia about Cotton though you can't really see it too well here his hair and overall facial look was the inspiration for Steve Ditko's rendering of Norman Osborn in the classic Spider-Man comics of the 1960s.

Anyways back to Peters, she gave a very strong performance of being a caring mother to her stepson while at the same time being feminine and sexy enough to disarm Cotton and others in the film until the pieces of the puzzle fit together where there's grave suspicions about her character.

I must say also that I wish there was more screentime devoted to Merrill and McLeod. They made a very good couple what with McCleod being a mystery writer to Merrill's lawyer. She was the one that got the ball rolling in the first place after Cotton goes to their place telling them how the daughter died and she gets the harebrained idea that it was poisoning and the plot moves from there.

The last third of the movie was quite tense and I just LOVED the standoff between Cotton and Peters after it's revealed he doped her drink with one of the strange pills in her aspirin bottle....The same kind of pills she may or may not have used to kill the daughter. I especially liked how she twists the situation around making Cotton look very guilty as she talks about him conniving behind her back trying to prove that she killed the daughter even after the courts decided there was no evidence to warrant a trial.

This was a very excellent little flick and it can be found on the 2 for 1 Midnite Movies disc along with a pretty good Jack Palance movie called Man in the Attic (1953). Here's the Amazon Link.

This movie gets a solid ** 1/2 stars.