Murder by Contract

It's tough to kill someone who's not dependable.

Murder by Contract is directed by Irving Lerner and written by Ben Simcoe. It stars Vince Edwards, Philip Pine, Michael Granger, Caprice Toriel and Herschel Bernardi. Music is by Perry Botkin and cinematography by Lucien Ballard.

Claude (Edwards) one day decides he's had enough of being a regular Joe earning regular Joe wages. He decides to become a hit man, and after enacting a few clinical kills he works his way into the confidence of the mysterious Mr. Brink. This earns him a "big hit" in Los Angeles, where he is to snuff out the main witness in a big upcoming trial. All is going well until he finds out the target is a woman, so where once Claude was calm and assured, he now becomes irritable and irked...

With the help of its appearance on the Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics DVD set, and a certain Martin Scorsese proclaiming it as one of the biggest influences on his career, Murder by Contract is getting the exposure it so dearly deserves. An odd, even kooky type of noir flavoured picture, it's a film that is like many of the late 50s film noirs that don't have the classic noir look. It's light, airy and set predominantly on the salty sea climes of the West Coast of America. It's with the characters, or in this case mainly the central character, where many of these "lighter" shot 50s crime movies get their noir worth. And Murder by Contract is a beaut in that respect.

He doesn't like guns!

For two parts of the running time it's a film oozing a sense of cool. Claude proves to be a calm and methodical protagonist, his dialogue sparkles with intelligence and sophistication, he knows the world and his place within it. Words like existentialism and spare, the latter of which Scorsese uses a lot, are words bandied about frequently in conjunction with Lerner's (City of Fear) movie. Those words signify how much of a great job Lerner and Ballard did, where shot in 7 days with a minimal budget they have...

I can't help but think this could have been so much better if only someone had taken a razor blade to the soundtrack. It's repetitive nature really annoyed me after about ten minutes. The story, though, is quite quirky and really centres around just three characters. "Claude" (Vince Edwards) is a contract killer - and an extremely efficient one - and his two minders who are supposed to liaise with their "chief" and sort out the logistics. All is going well until the latest target - a woman, a witness in an huge crime case - unsettles our otherwise meticulous and unshakable killer. Regrettably, this has been made on a shoestring with a tight turnaround, so we get little - if any - time to play any mind games with our assassin; what is it about killing a woman that troubles him? She's a relatively easy mark - even if she is guarded by the police 24 hours. The end of the film, therefore, feels just a bit rushed and thought there is a clear conclusion, it could have been much better developed and complete. Still, for what it is, it takes quite an innovative approach to a standard plot line and Edwards makes the whole thing certainly worth a watch.