calvinnme ... that probably being that you just have to hope things go your way in a couple of categories. First, you need to be an upstanding member of the community - but not too upstanding so that you are a target for some ambitious D.A. Second, you need to commit the crime in a jurisdiction where either the police are too lazy or too busy to look past the superficial details, where they accept whatever an overworked coroner says - accident, suicide, some sudden illness. Third, and this is where the killer in this film does not luck out, you need to make sure the grieving relatives are not the inquisitive persistent type, respectable and able to get the attention of those in charge of criminal investigations.Enter Whitney 'Cam' Cameron (Joseph Cotten), who makes a darned good villain as well as a protagonist, but here he's the good guy - or at least so he says. He lost his brother suddenly to encephalitis several years before, and now his niece has also died suddenly. The random remarks of Cam's little nephew, Cam's own inquisitive mind, and the fact that his close friend's wife is a writer of murder mysteries gets Cam suspecting his late brother's wife Lynn of murder. I'll let you see how everything unwinds yourself and who is brought to justice. Cotten narrates for almost the entire film, since he is trying to convince himself this woman is guilty even as he tries to prove her guilt to others - he has always liked her since his brother married her after the death of his first wife, thought she was a good stepmother to his brother's kids, and doesn't want to believe something so hideous, but he has to protect his brother's one surviving child, his nephew - again, so he says.One thing that has changed since 1953, besides the fact that fashionable ladies and gents all wore hats ,is that a person could die in the hospital - quite possibly due to a fatal mix up by the hospital pharmacy - and that an investigating relative would be met by cooperative hospital personnel and not by an army of stonewalling attorneys and form letters. At least, that's one thing I noticed as Cam went about the hospital where his niece died trying to get the facts.This is a very good mystery, yet Fox relegated it to half a bill on a Midnight Movie DVD. Give it a chance. It is not the fare usually associated with Midnight Movies - matrons baking cookies by day and turned ax murderer by night, wildlife run amok due to a nuclear blast, etc. Recommended.

Michael Parker Blueprint for Murder is a mess, but somehow a very entertaining mess. Unlike some other reviewers, I thought a lot of the performances were exceedingly weak (Gary Merrill and in many cases Joseph Cotten slog through the sets as if suffering from acute hangovers, each not living up to talent displayed in other pictures). Other performances are annoying, such as the actress who plays Merrill's wife (goofy, shrill and inexplicably peppy) as well as all the deadpan, lifeless detectives that trudge in and out of various interrogation scenes (these last performers appear to be non-professional actors in fact—they display zero technique).That said, I did quite enjoy Jean Peters, correctly characterized as underrated by another IMDb reviewer. For me she offers the only glamour and spark the picture has and her scenes are the film's highlights (especially those at the practically illogical but compulsively watchable climax, which also boasts a few memorably-framed shots).Ignoring some rather gaping plot holes, there are interesting ironies to the—let's face it—murderous games Cotten's character plays throughout the picture: for one, though he is the putative protagonist, he does little more than lie to his sister-in-law, the presumed murderess. Additionally, he is an absent father type, while Peters, the stepmother, is by all accounts a loving and affectionate guardian (though ultimately, like Cotten, capable of murder). As others have pointed out, there's a low-rent Uncle Charlie/Niece Charlie identification game going on here (as was portrayed much more successfully in Shadow of a Doubt). The fact that the two characters might easily fall into a sexual relationship is a great creepy touch.So how can I recommend this picture? Hard to say: maybe I liked it only for Peters's scenes, but somehow I liked it! Or maybe the thing is so abject and B-movie that you have to love it. Hooray for Hollywood, even on a very off day.

secondtake A Blueprint for Murder (1953)A clean, old-fashioned murder mystery, brightly lit, and even including a voyage on a cruise ship to Europe like some Betty Davis movie, or Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. It's a crime standard at the end of the film noir era, with a terrific star who never quite fit into any genre very well, Joseph Cotten. It's smart and fast and strong and almost believable, at least until the drawing room high stakes of the end, which is just great movie-making. Cotten plays Whitney Cameron, and he's visiting his niece in the hospital. Quick facts pour on (and are slightly hard to follow at first): she has some strange affliction, her father (Cameron's brother) died of a strange affliction a few years earlier, and the stepmother is sweet as cherry pie, though she plays a demonically fierce romantic piano. Then the niece suddenly dies, and before Cameron leaves the scene, suspicions arise about the stepmother.By the way, stepmothers can do terrible things that mothers would never do to their own children, like murder them. And so we are led down that obvious path. Soon, however, we know that the movie can't be quite that simple, and another suspect clarifies. The view is left deciding who is playing the better game of "not me." It's good stuff, very good, though constrained and reasonable, too. We don't always want "reasonable" in a film.The stepmother is excellent, played by Jean Peters, and a helping couple is also first rate, especially Gary Merrill as a lawyer friend. Merrill was in "Where the Sidewalk Ends" and "All About Eve," and is partly why those are great films. Peters plays the cheerful innocent here just as she did in a another pair of masterpieces, "Niagara" (with Cotten) and "Pickup on South Street" (a true noir from the same year as this one). It's Cotten who drives the movie, however, and he has a tone rather similar to his similar "visiting uncle" role in "Shadow of a Doubt." He is, in fact, a kind of soft-spoken, dependable icon in many movies (and later lots of t.v.) and it's because he's so normal that I think he's less adored. But he's exactly what the movie needs, guiding us first through the police investigation and then the informal one of his own. It had the makings of a tightly woven classic.Why are there so many films that are quite good but not amazing? I think a little of everything, often, but here it's the story itself that is limiting. A great idea, surely, but a little too familiar in its basic plot, and quite simple. A second plot, or another suspect, or another murder along the way would have been just fine. I think the directing (by Andrew Stone) is competent but lacks vision, and an unwillingness to push the edges a little. It proceeds, and we don't want movies to simply move along. There are, however, some excellent scenes, like one in the police office early on where the two leading men are led from one desk to another, from one group of cops to another, in a flowing, backward moving long take. It's a lesson in first rate cinematography, actually. And in fact the movie is totally enjoyable, never slow, expertly done, with a good cast.

dougdoepke Unusual movie since it's hard to adequately comment without giving away the ending. It's an efficient little suspenser, but nothing more. And that's too bad because the premise has more exciting possibilities than what's there on screen. The problem lies, I think, with the way the project was conceived as nothing more than a low-budget, 70-minute, quickie. It looks like the producers went out and hired a director then making his reputation on just such uncomplicated movie fare, Andrew Stone. He's perfect for the concept with his straight-ahead, documentary style that cares little for artifice or character. The script too plows straight- ahead with little subtlety or ambiguity. Thus a potential that would add the vital extra dimension of mystery or whodunit is eliminated from the outset, resulting in a straight suspense film with no surprises.Now I was slow to catch on. I kept looking for twists or some kind of ambiguity that would open up a mysterious aspect and leave me guessing. But there isn't any. The streamlined screenplay is utterly without artifice, which may have suited Stone, but left me with an ending that's not only badly contrived but also with the feeling that this can't be all there is. It's like taking a sight-seeing trip that keeps you watching, but ends up without any memorable sights to see.Too bad that fine actor Joseph Cotten is wasted in a role that could have gone to dozens of less talented male leads. There is so much room for ambiguity that would have engaged his talent, instead of turning him into a basically one-dimensional bloodhound. I sympathize with those posters who regret that the master of suspense and subtlety, Alfred Hitchcock, didn't get hold of the material first. Jean Peters is fine, and I can see why the notorious womanizer Howard Hughes slapped a ring on her finger if only for a little while. But that final scene of waiting her out is so utterly implausible. After all, what does she gain by risking agonizing death since she's trapped on board ship where a trip to ship's doctor can be easily verified. Once she drinks the cocktail, her fate is sealed, and it's foolish of the screenplay to pretend otherwise.In passing—note how at ease director Stone is with the cop scenes. I detect a Dragnet influence from the TV series, even down to series veterans Phillips and Kruschen. Put that sort of material, such as The Night Holds Terror (1954), in Stone's hands and his single- minded devotion to procedure and plot works really well. Where it doesn't work so well is reducing potentially complex material like Blueprint to routine docu-drama.