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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Fresh and Exciting

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Robert Wagner in his youthful handsomeness days plays an evil sociopath bent on marrying money, he kills one sister Dorothy because she would be disowned by her puritanical father for getting pregnant and goes after the other Ellen. His motive is to get his hands on their father's huge copper mine in Arizona.It was obvious to me that Ellen's boyfriend would be Wagner the minute she mentioned she had a boyfriend....also it was obvious Wagner would be pushed off into the mine at the end. However there are plenty of other twists and surprises that I didn't see coming.A couple odd items no one mentioned...Dorothy's 1957 Thunderbird convertible is copper colored as are the phones and ticker tape machine in the family mansion. There are visual "cues" everywhere commenting on what just happened or what is going to happen. After Dorothy falls down the bleachers (given a helpful push by Wagner) you see a street sign saying SPEED KILLS. I laughed at the reviewer who said this tumble down the bleachers must have been a first for the film industry where a pregnant woman didn't have a miscarriage.The movie holds your interest as it is fast paced with lots of red herrings being fired at you all the time--most fizzle quickly like Wagner about to leave his notebook in the arsenic store room--but not all.Much more knowledgeable reviews exist for this period piece. It was a B grade movie (boiler plate for double features) but a good one.

Robert Wagner plays Bud Corliss, a pathologically ambitious young college student at "Stoddard U." Bud is twenty-five years old, living at home with his mother. From a newspaper article mounted in a picture frame in his room, shell casings on his desk, and a reference to his being wounded, it is implied that Corliss is a decorated Korean War veteran. It was never clear to me what significance this war hero business had, unless a reason had to be given for Wagner's being a little old to be a college student. I don't see it going to motivation. Corliss sees a path to riches by taking up with Dorothy (Joanne Woodward), the daughter of a rich copper mine owner, but his intentions are thwarted by an unwanted pregnancy that he knows Dorothy's father will not accept. Not to be deterred, Corliss will do anything to achieve his goal, yes even murder.With many recent movies setting their stories in the 1950s ("Far from Heaven," "Pleasantville," "Revolutionary Road," and so forth) it is refreshing to see the real thing. Instead of wondering where they got that pristine 1955 Ford Thunderbird, or all of the other old cars, you know that they are for real. This was filmed in and around Tucson, Arizona and that, together with the clothing (did men really wear coats and ties to their classes in the 50s?) and hair styles, makes for an authentic feeling. The production in color CinemaScope is lush, although the color balance on the DVD I watched shifted on occasion.All of the things this had going for it, including having the two attractive young stars on board, should have amounted to something special, but the whole is less than the sum of its parts. I know that love can blind you, but Dorothy is so naive as to be unbelievable. Wagner plays Corliss as quite emotionless, which I suppose is in keeping with his character, but he never creates any sense of menace that I think is necessary to involve us in such a story (consider Anthony Perkins in "Psycho"). The music tries to compensate for Wagner's lack of menace with its ominous fulminations, but it came across as overly intrusive to me. I could never get beyond the feeling that the actors were acting.We are in Hitchcock territory here and I think that under his direction this might have been memorable movie rather than the modest entertainment it is.

Handsome college student Robert Wagner (as Bud Corliss) gets his heiress fiancée, Joanne Woodward (as Dorothy "Dorrie" Kingship), "in trouble". Unfortunately, this means Mr. Wagner can't marry the two months pregnant Ms. Woodward - because her savvy father George Macready (as Leo Kingship) frowns on sex before marriage. Wagner realizes he will have to drop out of school, and support his disinherited love child, unless he can come up with another solution… When Woodward gets up unscathed, after her fall on the bleachers, it's almost like you're watching a cartoon. She suffers nary a scratch, and is too stupid to ask why Wagner expressed so little concern. Still, it's fun to watch 25-year-old Wagner try to get away with it; his is a cool, subliminal performance. And, just when you thought the film couldn't get any better looking, Jeffrey Hunter (as Gordon Grant) and Virginia Leith (as Ellen Kingship) enter the storyline. Director Gerd Oswald gets in some good Hitchcock-like licks; and, Mary Astor (as mother Corliss) dresses up well.****** A Kiss Before Dying (1956) Gerd Oswald ~ Robert Wagner, Joanne Woodward, Virginia Leith

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.