A Kiss Before Dying (1956)

So much average

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I enjoyed the movie as I always like watching everything Joanne Woodward starred in and had not seen this one before. Although it was not her best, it was an early role and she was quite young, as were the others. I was especially surprised when in the hotel lobby scene about 2/3 through the movie an extra, a woman walked past and then was seated at a booth and the blouse she was wearing was completely "see through" and all you could see was her bra. This was not customary for the 1950s when this was filmed and ones eye was totally taken off the stars and onto this "extra". I was surprised. Even though there were no surprises in the movie as everyone knew who the murderer was, I still enjoyed this 50s version that has been since remade.

They should have made the director watch some Hitchcocks before making this poor attempt at a thriller. He obviously hadn't the shadow of a clue how to make this exciting or create the right tension. The garish color photography and snazzy jazz score don't help either. " A kiss before dying, bababie bababoo". Really gets you in the right mood. The against-type casting of Robert Wagner as the socially ambitious killer was an interesting move, but doesn't pay off because of his total lack of acting skills. The moral ambiguity this role needs to work is completely absent in his performance. Not that the other actors are much better, in fact they're worse. My personal Razzie goes to the ludicrously stilted father figure, although the bookish college don complete with pipe and glasses is hot on his heels. Only Joanne Woodward's character earns some sympathy, but maybe that's because you know she's gonna get bumped off. This movie limps from one ludicrous scene to the next. For fans of cheesy movies i especially recommend the scene in which the killer forces another guy to sit down and have his head blown off, only to have the victim oblige without so much as an attempt at attacking his murderer. Maybe they actually were more polite in the Fifties. The final scene is also unforgettably corny and.... oh well, i've wasted enough time in both watching and complaining about this overcooked turkey. Not bad enough to be campy, but worse: just plain bad.

1956 marks the year Robert Wagner went over to the dark side. In The Mountain he plays Spencer Tracy's spoiled younger brother and in A Kiss Before Dying, Wagner is a charming, but quite ruthless young man looking to better himself through bedroom skills.In fact impregnating Joanne Woodward might have done the trick in many cases. Normally they'd have gotten married and a reluctant father would have been happy just to protect his daughter's good name. However in Joanne's case and in her sister Virginia Leith's case, their father is puritanical George MacReady who long ago tossed their mom on the street because of an ancient indiscretion. Joanne knows full well that this could be her fate. Wagner knows if he's exposed as the dirty dog who knocked her up, MacReady will give him problems too.So to extricate himself Wagner plans a quite deliberate murder of Woodward. When it happens Leith isn't convinced its suicide even with a cryptic note. But young police detective Jeffrey Hunter likes her anyway. The story begins when Leith begins her own investigation and Wagner starts courting Leith.Robert Wagner shows his acting chops in this film. He was like that other contract player at 20th Century Fox Tyrone Power who kept pressing for roles to show what he could do as well. Both of course eventually got them. Joanne Woodward is a year away from her career breakthrough in The Three Faces Of Eve and she's sweet and tender as the naive kid in the clutches of a ruthless charmer. And George MacReady can be as evil as a puritan as well as the most diabolical of villains in which he's usually cast.A Kiss Before Dying is not a bad film, but with someone like an Alfred Hitchcock directing it would have been great. As it is, it's entertaining, but falls short of being a classic.

"A Kiss Before Dying" is a tense crime thriller in which a cold, calculating, psychopathic student, who is determined to be rich, ruthlessly pursues his goal without any concern for those who suffer as a result of his actions.Bud Corliss (Robert Wagner) is the son of an absent father who never did well financially and is powerfully driven to take a different route and become wealthy. Having carried out some research on a local mining company, he pursues a plan to make a fortune by becoming a part of the family who own the business. To this end, he has been courting Dorothy (Dorie)Kingship (Joanne Woodward), but a problem arises when she becomes pregnant and marriage is not a viable proposition because her stern, puritanical father would be certain to disinherit her. Dorie doesn't care about being disowned by her father and quite relishes breaking away from his influence but for Bud, this would defeat the purpose of his relationship with her. Bud pretends to be equally keen to go ahead and marry but murders Dorie in a spectacular fashion after having tricked her into writing a note which gives the impression that she's committed suicide.A little time after Dorie's "suicide", Bud starts to court her sister Ellen (Virginia Leith). This is possible because his relationship with Dorie had always been carried on in secret. Unfortunately for Bud, Ellen has never been fully convinced that her sister would have taken her own life and she starts to come across further information which supports that view. When she is led to believe that Bud knew Dorie, her doubts about him grow.Corliss is intense, crafty and full of guile and at the same time lacks any sincerity, passion or spontaneity. Robert Wagner in one of his early screen roles, portrays this complex mixture of qualities well and it's perfectly understandable that his rather dour, downbeat, demeanour would seem quite acceptable to Dorie because of her father's similarly cold nature. Joanne Woodward (also in one of her early roles) is convincingly naive, vulnerable and gullible. It's also rather ironical that a conflict between the two characters should exist in a situation where both are attracted to the idea of marriage to the other because such a move would remove them from their existing circumstances.The scene at the sports field where Bud and Dorie are in the seated area discussing their predicament is visually quite striking as the almost abstract background seems to be closing in on them and in so doing, reinforces the strong sense of despair and entrapment which Bud is feeling at that time. The manner in which Bud is visually revealed as Ellen's new boyfriend and the way in which Dorie's murder is depicted, are just two further highlights of this interesting and absorbing melodrama.