Murder by Contract (1958)

This cult-style low budget film is both fascinating and detached to the point of coldness (if not boredom),and whether you'll like or not might depend on attitude. The relentlessly cold-blooded murderous main character (played by Vince Edwards),in his late-50s handsome and sharply dressed style, is just false enough (if not exactly unconvincing) to keep the movie from taking on a life of its own in any conventional sense. We spend a lot of time watching this man get phone calls and then perform murders of various kinds (off camera, for the most part),and then zero in on the big one with a couple cronies watching. And yet he isn't especially fascinating or complex, just very hardened and determined. And so his functional presence, good looking as it might be to some viewers, isn't enough to lift up the movie.

And yet the story is told in such rapid, spare, and matter-of-fact terms it's downright original. I can't think of a movie like it, though I just happened to see "Blast of Silence" which is a far better low-budget story of a gunman, and it comes from the same period (1961). What helped that later movie, and many other offbeat non-Hollywood affairs, is all the location shooting (that is, the locations themselves were fascinating),and "Murder by Contract" almost studiously avoids any sense of place, or mood and ambiance from a place (except for bright, spare, fringe of L.A. stuff, which is nice). This series of mostly rooms and interiors (some with the same oddly speckled walls and doors) creates a blankness that is both drab and defining.

If this movie isn't really existential in the dramatic Orson Welles sense (or Carol Reed, or what the heck, Stanley Kubrick),the main character really is a film noir staple of a man out of place in the world and utterly utterly alone. His solution is a cold and increasingly false one--kill kill kill. For money, all toward some dream house on the Ohio River, of all places. I think the idea there is that his dream is actually modest, not some love nest in the south of France, but rather a place of honest comfort, like the farm Sterling Hayden returns to in "Asphalt Jungle." It may be no coincidence that Ben Maddow worked on the screenplay for both films.

So if you can adapt to the minimalist style (and acting),and absorb the rather intelligent cinematography by Lucien Ballard (a big name for this small film),you might start to see why it has such a lasting reputation. The music is pretty terrific, a kind of 1950s electric guitar ambiance ahead of its time. In fact, much of the movie is forward thinking out of desperation to make it cohere and succeed without any money. Director Irving Lerner (famously caught spying for the Soviets during WWII though never prosecuted) has had a long career as a secondary director or editor to some of the greats in Hollywood, and some of that talent and visual acumen is shown off here, whatever the larger limitations.

"Murder By Contract" is a very frustrating film, as with a slight polishing up of the script and it would have been great. But, unfortunately, some inconsistencies really took a hit on the film. Now it still is very enjoyable and economically made, so I certainly can't just dismiss it--and it still is worth seeing.

Vince Edwards does a terrific job playing a cold-blooded contract killer. The film begins with him getting his first mob job and then after showing him work through his first few contracts he gets a big break--a big hit across the country with a big price. When Edwards arrived in California, however, he show no sense of urgency and this drives his mob handlers crazy. But he's slow and methodical...and very scary.

Unfortunately for Edwards' character, this killing turns out to be a lot tougher than he thought. The target is a woman (and he hates killing women) and she's very closely guarded by the police. The job seems impossible. However, he has not choice--either make the hit or the mob will make sure he doesn't survive.

The film gets high marks for showing the manner in which the killing is planned and executed. It also generally gets high marks for the hit-man character. However, and this is what bothered me, he was NOT consistently written or acted. While he was a smart guy who made all the right moves, in the film I saw several times where he had brain lapses--such as leaving finger prints and too many witnesses. In light of his coldness and amoral nature, none of this made sense--nor did the rather half-hearted ending where, inexplicably, his character behaved VERY inconsistently. Again, as I said above, with a bit of polishing to the script they could have ironed out these problems and had a great film. As it was, it was very good but no more.

I'm afraid I have to take a minority position n this one. I disagree with those who say this is some kind of hidden noir classic.

TV's future Ben Casey stars in Murder By Contract. Edwards plays a contract killer who gets all kinds of issues when he finds out the target is a woman who will be a witness against a syndicate crime boss.

I have to say that if Edwards delayed and prevaricated as much as he does here he would make no living as a hit man. Sadly renders this film as a lot of nonsense.

Pass it by.