Tuesday 16 January 2024

Murder by Contract (1958 Irving Lerner)

A strange little film. Its slightly beatnik guitar score, by Perry Botkin, and its on-location filming and zen assassin make it almost a forerunner of the New Wave - or at least a sixties French or Italian comedy-thriller.

Vince Edwards is the assassin who faces an almost impossible assignment in LA. Herschel Bernardi is the more likable of the two crooks who support him, Phillip Pine the other, more annoyed one.. Caprice Toriel is the target.

Quite mad e.g. scene where the assassin teaches his colleague to shoot arrows across a room and he ends up shooting them across a canyon.

The only name I knew behind the camera was DP Lucien Ballard. It was a Columbia release.

Edwards was in The Killing and The Victors. Then the long running TV medical drama Ben Casey.

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