Watch Please Murder Me For Free

Very well executed

It is a performances centric movie

Good movie but grossly overrated

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

A refreshing and well written movie to enjoy, with obviously cool and superior acting, not only from the couple of leads (he got 2nd billing), Foran has a supporting role, everything in a genre now perhaps less used, the cool urban suspense movie, which is the bourgeois side of the age's trend (no low lives, thugs, gangsters, and it requires both strong plot and acting), cool enough and enough dramatic, set, like another very good one, 'Jordon', in a bourgeois milieu, with the leads aware that they are giving signature roles, it uses the device of a recorded confession from a broken man, and for a time there follows a courtroom drama, enlivened by excellent performances, with Burr wholly convincing as an attorney, the plot seems very simple, with the twist being the murderess' love for the painter, so that the lawyer's vindictive jealousy comes across as petty and mean, the widow makes up for her 1st murder, by a 2nd one, but this time out of love and care, which shows that the lawyer's claim that the painter would be another, 3rd fall guy, is false, he expects her murderous burst precisely out of her love for the young painter, so that while the lawyer remains in the sphere of the vindictiveness, she ascends to proving her love, albeit by losing, presumably, her own life; the whole is less about what the director does, than about what the movie itself does to you.There are semitones of eeriness in the scenes with the three characters (the lawyer, the widow, the painter), the menace, the lawyer's game. The sets give a deep joy.Burr looked intelligent and shrewd; Angela L., chilling for a while, then humane, more so than her defendant. Far from being convinced that the woman doesn't love the painter, he's sure that she does, and uses even this to get his revenge. Her second murder proves that she genuinely loves the painter; her love is intense, she kills the lawyer, to keep the painter, which ingratiates her to us. She cares about being with the painter. So, it's she who gets the upper hand. Why did the unsparing lawyer claim she doesn't care for her lover? Foran (a legend of the unpretentious westerns) is the murdered husband; Lamont Johnston plays the 3rd man, the painter.

This isn't a terribly original movie, but even though the pacing feels off and the dialogue is weak I still found it pretty watchable. The film starts well, offering a 50s b-movie noir sensibility that is intriguing, but it soon lapsed into a somewhat lackluster courtroom drama. The courtroom scenes feel like Perry Mason taken down a notch, though the movie certainly could have looked like a proof of concept for Raymond Burr's eventual casting in that role.Angela Lansbury fails to exhibit the high drama I expect from her, which was a disappointment. She has star billing in the movie but it's not really a star role and there's no real character development. There are some good ideas in the movie, but the director just didn't know how to use those ideas to their potential.I might have enjoyed this movie a bit more if the print had been better - the picture is scratchy and some of the dialogue is almost inaudible - but even in a better print, this movie lacks that special something that makes the best noirs so compelling.

This is a small film, in that the stars weren't big-name stars of the day. PLEASE MURDER ME stars Raymond Burr (just before he made it big as Perry Mason), Angela Lansbury and Dick Foran--all capable actors, though hardly starring actors of the day. Despite this lack of star power and an apparent small budget, it's not a bad film--especially when there is a twist and the plot quickly changes about midway through the movie.The film begins as Burr is sitting in his office in the darkness--dictating to a tape recorder that he's about to be murdered. Both the lighting and the idea of a man talking about his impending demise are very much in keeping with a Film Noir piece--as is the direction the film goes in the second half. As for the first half, it starts off with Burr telling his best friend that he has fallen for this friend's wife and wants to marry her! Oddly, instead of punching Burr in the face, the guy says he'll get back with Burr in a few days. However, after a few days, his wife shoots him--claiming he was trying to kill her. Did she do this in self-defense and what will her lawyer (Burr) do? While some of this is a bit predictable, it certainly all isn't and makes for a nifty little film. It's not 100% believable, but given that it's so entertaining, why worry about this? If you are interested in seeing it, it's in the public domain and can be downloaded for free from the IMDb site.By the way, look for Denver Pyle in a small role as a detective testifying in court. It's interesting because Pyle lacks his usual heavy Southern accent and he seems quite at home playing a man living in the big city.

I give this one a 10 and dub it a diamond in the rough, worthy of rediscovery by today's gay cynics. After this one gets going it pays off with unintentional laughs again and again. The acting is stilted, to be sure! The plot is preposterous, and Angela Lansbury's performance will have you in stitches (too good to be true - isn't it true she has the mouth of a truck driver in real life?). The cherry on the sundae is queer-in-real-life Raymond Burr's character's immense, almost obsessive love for his dead male friend (WINK WINK) as well as his idiotically masochistic obsession with Justice (oh, Ye Gods!). His Karl Rove-like calculated and infallible retaliation against Lansbury for her arch treachery wears the crown of high camp. It all seems perhaps more fresh than it ever could have before due to the current climate in US politics (with Machiavellian maniacs like Rove guiding the destiny of a country onto the rocks for purely spiteful and self-serving reasons). Fire up a BIG batch of popcorn, mix up a gallon of Mai-tais, and have over all the snippiest gay men you know for cocktails and 78 minutes of PURE TRASH you can sink your claws into. I kid you not. When you least expect it, this movie pays off out of left field again and again. You'll be sitting there asking yourself, "what were they on when they made this thing?" It's kinda like an episode of Perry Mason, except I never sensed that Perry would have reacted so self-destructively over losing a case (not that Perry ever would lose a case!). Okay, enough said. You know the drill. Track it down on eBay or at your local video store if they can find one (mine had a copy and I rented it on a whim, based on the title. By the way, if the title alone doesn't get your girlfriends to show up to see what all the fuss is about they're sorry sports, indeed). Suggested co-features include...Fritz Lang's film noir masterpiece, SCARLET STREET (1945) in which bad girl Joan Bennett takes soft-hearted chump Edward G. Robinson on the ride of his life...The saucy pulp fiction, CRIME OF PASSION (1957) in which desperate housewife Barbara Stanwyck inexplicably casts aside a torrid love affair with hard-as-a-rock Sterling Hayden for a cheap fling with Raymond Burr (yeah, can you believe it???)...or John Waters' FEMALE TROUBLE (1974) which always pairs well with any other girl-gone-bad film.