A Kiss Before Dying (1956)

Robert Wagner gambled with his clean-cut image to play the ruthless, conniving killer in this unrelenting thriller co-starring Jeffrey Hunter, Virginia Leith, Joanne Woodward and Mary Astor. Based onthe novel by suspense master Ira Levin ( Deathtrap ), A Kiss Before Dying is riveting, sure-fire entertainment you can't miss! Wagner is Bud Corliss, a darkly handsome college boy so obsessedwith wealth that he'll do anything to get it. When his rich girlfriend Dorothy (Woodward) gets pregnant and is threatened with disinheritance, Bud stages her suicide, sending her plummeting from the roof of a high-rise. It's the perfect crime until Dorothy's sister Ellen (Leith) begins to unravel Bud's deadly scheme.

First Half is Brilliant

He may not have been James Dean, but Robert Wagner delivers a career performance in this sorely neglected sleeper from 1956. The first half is a beautifully shaded dance of death as Wagner plots to rid himself of the inconveniently pregnant Joanne Woodward. He's all sincere insincerity from one rendevous to the next, while she wants desperately to believe, even against all odds. Has there ever been a more cold-hearted manipulator of vulnerable feminine desires. Dory (Woodward) is all whiney expectations, while Wagner conceals ruthless ambition behind a pretty boy mask.

Director Gerd Oswald's staging of the first half is little short of brilliant, and had the filming been in appropriate black and white, a latter day noir classic would have resulted. Notice how subtly Woodward expects a kiss atop the municipal building, the pinnacle of her girlish dreams, while Bud (Wagner) callously lights a cigarette, oblivious to her romantic longing. And what a gripping piece of morbid pathology is Wagner's slip-sliding through the chemistry lab as he prepares a toxic potion for his lady love. Maybe in the last analysis, Bud's problem lies with mother. The fixation is certainly not normal, as she senses in putting off his request for a "date". Yet as Bud's social climbing becomes tellingly clear, the ambitious plans are for mom too. The subtext here is a risky one for 50's popular entertainment.

Unfortunately, the second half reverts to standard Hollywood convention, the suspense subsiding along with the first-rate mood music. Putting a pipe in the callow Jeffrey Hunter's mouth and making him a college professor amounts to a crippling micalculation on someone's part. Hunter's simply not the type, nor does he have the gravitas to carry the plot forward. Note the monster truck bearing down. That's the hand of predestination Bud should have noted in that literature class. There is a point to Dory's unfortunate life, after all. The end result is a hybrid of first-half brilliance and second-half mediocrity. Too bad.

Worth the purchase, nonetheless. December 1, 2007

Dated but Amusing

Skinny, sociopathic pretty boy Robert Wagner accidentally knocks dopey, rich girl Dori (Joanne Woodward. He does the right thing by sociopath standards and makes her death look like a suicide. But her suspicious sister and Jeffrey Hunter (who apparently thinks he's Clark Kent) aren't convinced she took her own life. While the acting is on the bad side and I found myself laughing more than a few times during the film I did enjoy it. For me the most interesting part of it was seeing Jeffrey Hunter as someone other than Capt. Christopher Pike from the original Star Trek. Oh, and the cars... there's some cool cars in this film. But aside from that it does feel dated and a bit slow by today's standards. Some old movies like The Third Man, for example, hold up well after 50+ years. Others like this one... not so much although it does have at least one valuable life lesson in it: Girls who question whether or not their fiances are insane live, those who don't die. June 7, 2007

Core evil defined by greed

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. May 7, 2007

Much better than the remake, but still not quite there...

The 1955 A Kiss Before Dying is much better than James Dearden's TV-looking remake, but doesn't hold up as well as it could to a second viewing. Gerd Oswald directed many of the best episodes of The Outer Limits but never made much impact on the big screen, and at times this is a little too conventional in its approach to its once taboo subject matter, although he makes a surprisingly decent stab at the unfilmable twist from Ira Levin's novel. But there's still the feeling that he gets more mileage out of the first half of the film, as Robert Wagner's All-American working class psycho finds his plans to marry into money shattered by an unplanned pregnancy (thrown away almost entirely in the remake) than the amateur detective work of the second half. Jeffrey Hunter's stiff turn as the eternally pipe-smoking square doesn't help matters much, but it's still worth seeing at least once. Curiously, the film looks and feels almost exactly like a mid-50s 20th Century Fox film, but was actually an independent picture released by United Artists.

MGM/UA's disc offers a nice 2.35:1 transfer with the original theatrical trailer. November 6, 2005

Robert Quarry alert!

Holly Molly, Count Yorga is in this! I watched an entire scene before realising it was him. Sadly, Drac's understudy appears in a scene of almost self-emoliating unhipness. He plays a DJ who gets his brains blown out all over a typewriter, despite the fact that his wimpy killer was not holding the gun with any great conviction and moving around a lot in a confined space. What with being a DJ and all, you'd think he'd be handy with his arms but he just sits there crying for his mummy. Get a back bone man, you've got nothing to lose by having a go at the oleaginous creep. I mean he had trouble restraining a girl later on in the flick and you are sitting down too. So easy to grab his arm. Why am I wasting precious life rabbiting on about some old scene? Well, unhipness on this scale can threaten our very existence. Call it a public service. Poor Robert Quarry. Sorry, I mean, crown prince of UNCOOL!

The film's title is not technically correct. There is a bit of flying before she actually does the dying. But 'A Kiss Before Flying And Then Dying' is not so snappy on a marquee. People might think she got on a plane before dying. In which case, how did he kill her long distance? You have to consider these things. Well, not you personally. Where was I? Virginia Leith wears a clinging white top that is an outrageous come-on even for the fifties. There are enough vintage cars to make you nostalgic. Unless your name begins with C and ends in O and you smoke Cuban cigars. My God, that was laboured. This really is a slow sunday. Perfect for a nasty, tense pot boiler to break the nu. Hang on, I'll look that up. Ennui. August 21, 2005

More reviews at Amazon.com ...