Like the generic choice at your local supermarket or drugstore, this thriller manqué aims to deliver the same effect as the nationally advertised brands. This one, a sort of DIAL M FOR MURDER knock-off with nods toward other Alfred Hitchcock films (a tag ending straight out of STRANGERS ON A TRAIN) is set to the boil, but only evaporates, without leaving a suspenseful residuum. Movie producer Stewart Granger has a handful in tempestuous diva Gianna Maria Canale (even more annoying then called for), demanding ‘personal’ attention. Been there, done that, thinks Granger, newly true to wife Donna Reed (in her final feature at only 37). But when he’s suspiciously late for his own house party (and forgets to pick up the lobster), Reed has reason to doubt. Especially when Scotland Yard man George Sanders crashes the party to ask Granger about Canale’s murder. Yikes! Only Sanders ain’t no cop, but the dead woman’s estranged husband, out to frame Granger for the murder. With Jack Clayton producing & John Guillermin directing off Hollywood vet Jonathan Latimer’s script, you expect things to at least add up. But the twists & turns are too arbitrary to bother about, with only Sanders’ froid (paradoxically) generating any heat.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: What’s with Mischa Spoliansky’s jazz-oriented score? Loaded with ‘blue-note’ punctuation like Henry Mancini’s PINK PANTHER movies. See George Sanders working to that Mancini beat in Blake Edwards’ A SHOT IN THE DARK/’64, unofficial PINK PANTHER 2. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/08/shot-in-dark-1964.html
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