A Kiss Before Dying (1956)

Directed by Gerd Oswald. Starring Robert Wagner, Virginia Leith, Joanne Woodward, Jeffrey Hunter, Mary Astor, Robert Quarry, George Macready, Howard Petrie.

College student Wagner romances Woodward for her family fortune, but when she gets pregnant (and almost certainly to be disowned by her father for it), he plots to kill her and woo her sister (Leith) instead. Icy, subtly inventive adaptation of the Ira Levin novel is not especially memorable and only periodically gripping, but gets the job done all the same. Wagner gives one of his better performances as a chillingly calculated maniac; in one of her earliest roles, Woodward is just okay, but Leith and Hunter (as Woodward’s tutor who smells something fishy) are both antiseptic playing the characters the audience is supposed to sympathize with and root for. Wagner’s relationship with his mother (Astor) presents some intriguing possibilities that are only hinted at and largely forgotten later in the picture. Avoid the inferior 1991 remake with Matt Dillon and Sean Young.

60/100