Maidgethma Wonderfully offbeat film!

WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

joe-pearce-1 This is a film very much of its time and it is almost impossible to convey the surprise it would have engendered back then in audiences when it gave us Robert Wagner as a cold-bloodied psychopath, Mr. Wagner having previously been cast, usually to excellent effect, only as admirable and good-looking (very) young men. Reviewers keep comparing its story line to PSYCHO's, but that is pure nonsense. First viewing PSYCHO when it came out, you had no idea that teen semi-idol Anthony Perkins was the killer; the only non-narrative shock element in it was having star Janet Leigh killed off by the end of the film's first half. Seeing Wagner as a psychopath back in 1956 had that same kind of stunning non-narrative shock for viewers, especially since we know he's the bad guy almost from the opening frame. Also, although the story is pretty dark, it is not a noir because noirs almost always depend on an innocent, or at least anti-heroic, male lead who gets into trouble because of, and is often destroyed by, a femme fatale. In this film, there is only one fatal character and it is the male lead. Wagner does it very well, Joanne Woodward is moving as his (first) victim, and even beautiful Virginia Leith comes over pretty well. Jeffrey Hunter as a young, pipe-smoking college professor comes over basically, given his later career identification, as a young pipe-smoking and beardless Jesus Christ, with glasses! But the film is quite good. What keeps it from being truly memorable or even great is that it is based on one of the very great mystery novels of the period by Ira Levin (his first success, and long before ROSEMARY'S BABY, THE STEPFORD WIVES and THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, it quite literally made his name), and that novel has one of the greatest of all surprises in a mystery novel midway through it, one that could make you drop the book in shock while exclaiming, "Oh, my God!", but it is that effective because you are reading a narrative in which the author can disguise certain plot elements in words, and the shock cannot be duplicated on the screen by virtue of the fact that you can actually SEE the characters going through all their machinations, so that such surprise elements cannot be hidden from the viewer. Too bad, though, because if a writer/director could come up with a way to duplicate Levin's written surprise, he might have a totally brilliant mystery film to offer. In fact, it's nearest relationship to many of Hitchcock's later films is that it is a beautifully filmed daylight thriller. Indeed, most of the worst things in the film happen around noontime, in broad daylight and in glorious Technicolor, and that can be hard to pull off. It is pulled off very well here, indeed. Finally, since I am of the film's period, I can attest to the fact that this movie really does provide a legitimate 1950s atmosphere - visually, ethically and morally. You wouldn't really be all that surprised to see Dwight D. Eisenhower walking through Robert Wagner's college campus!

movie reviews 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.

bandw 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.

whpratt1 For some reason I missed viewing this film and was taken by surprise at how very young Robert Wagner was in this picture. Wagner plays the role as a playboy looking for a rich young girl with a father who has plenty of money. Wagner is very tricky about his plans and at the same time makes some very big mistakes. Wagner finds himself with two girls who he has on the hook and he finds himself in a deep trap until he goes to the municipal building in town for a marriage license and at this point the film becomes a triller and we begin to become very interested in the plot and just how will it end. Enjoy a young Wagner, he was so young I did not recognize him.