A Kiss Before Dying

Description

Robert Wagner gambled with his clean-cut image to play the ruthless, conniving killer in this unrelenting thriller co-starring Jeffrey Hunter, Virginia Leith, Joanne Woodward and Mary Astor. Based onthe novel by suspense master Ira Levin ( Deathtrap ), A Kiss Before Dying is riveting, sure-fire entertainment you can't miss! Wagner is Bud Corliss, a darkly handsome college boy so obsessedwith wealth that he'll do anything to get it. When his rich girlfriend Dorothy (Woodward) gets pregnant and is threatened with disinheritance, Bud stages her suicide, sending her plummeting from the roof of a high-rise. It's the perfect crime until Dorothy's sister Ellen (Leith) begins to unravel Bud's deadly scheme.

Customer Reviews:

Dated but Amusing.......2007-06-07

Skinny, sociopathic pretty boy Robert Wagner accidentally knocks dopey, rich girl Dori (Joanne Woodward. He does the right thing by sociopath standards and makes her death look like a suicide. But her suspicious sister and Jeffrey Hunter (who apparently thinks he's Clark Kent) aren't convinced she took her own life. While the acting is on the bad side and I found myself laughing more than a few times during the film I did enjoy it. For me the most interesting part of it was seeing Jeffrey Hunter as someone other than Capt. Christopher Pike from the original Star Trek. Oh, and the cars... there's some cool cars in this film. But aside from that it does feel dated and a bit slow by today's standards. Some old movies like The Third Man, for example, hold up well after 50+ years. Others like this one... not so much although it does have at least one valuable life lesson in it: Girls who question whether or not their fiances are insane live, those who don't die.

Core evil defined by greed.......2007-05-07

Greed and evil is dripping from the screen like frosting colors melting in the sun. Watch out for the dead eyes. They will chill you to the core.

Much better than the remake, but still not quite there..........2005-11-06

The 1955 A Kiss Before Dying is much better than James Dearden's TV-looking remake, but doesn't hold up as well as it could to a second viewing. Gerd Oswald directed many of the best episodes of The Outer Limits but never made much impact on the big screen, and at times this is a little too conventional in its approach to its once taboo subject matter, although he makes a surprisingly decent stab at the unfilmable twist from Ira Levin's novel. But there's still the feeling that he gets more mileage out of the first half of the film, as Robert Wagner's All-American working class psycho finds his plans to marry into money shattered by an unplanned pregnancy (thrown away almost entirely in the remake) than the amateur detective work of the second half. Jeffrey Hunter's stiff turn as the eternally pipe-smoking square doesn't help matters much, but it's still worth seeing at least once. Curiously, the film looks and feels almost exactly like a mid-50s 20th Century Fox film, but was actually an independent picture released by United Artists.

MGM/UA's disc offers a nice 2.35:1 transfer with the original theatrical trailer.

Robert Quarry alert!.......2005-08-21

Holly Molly, Count Yorga is in this! I watched an entire scene before realising it was him. Sadly, Drac's understudy appears in a scene of almost self-emoliating unhipness. He plays a DJ who gets his brains blown out all over a typewriter, despite the fact that his wimpy killer was not holding the gun with any great conviction and moving around a lot in a confined space. What with being a DJ and all, you'd think he'd be handy with his arms but he just sits there crying for his mummy. Get a back bone man, you've got nothing to lose by having a go at the oleaginous creep. I mean he had trouble restraining a girl later on in the flick and you are sitting down too. So easy to grab his arm. Why am I wasting precious life rabbiting on about some old scene? Well, unhipness on this scale can threaten our very existence. Call it a public service. Poor Robert Quarry. Sorry, I mean, crown prince of UNCOOL!

The film's title is not technically correct. There is a bit of flying before she actually does the dying. But 'A Kiss Before Flying And Then Dying' is not so snappy on a marquee. People might think she got on a plane before dying. In which case, how did he kill her long distance? You have to consider these things. Well, not you personally. Where was I? Virginia Leith wears a clinging white top that is an outrageous come-on even for the fifties. There are enough vintage cars to make you nostalgic. Unless your name begins with C and ends in O and you smoke Cuban cigars. My God, that was laboured. This really is a slow sunday. Perfect for a nasty, tense pot boiler to break the nu. Hang on, I'll look that up. Ennui.

Slightly better than the remake,.......2005-03-15

but only slightly. Wagner is really the only thing that stands out even a little bit in this. Joanne Woodward -- who apparently learned a LOT about acting between this and her next film -- was almost lackluster in her performance. Nothing about her was "special," other than her character was spoiled, stubborn, a drama queen and whined constantly. The other actors were equally ineffective. Virginia Leith was attractive, but that's about it. Look where she ended up 3 years later... Jeffrey Hunter looked like a kid playing grown-up with that pipe, and was really poor in this. Mary Astor was also a throwaway; one of her worst performances. The others were just there. The plot was decent, if a bit hackneyed; you see a lot coming. All told, catchit on TV or rent it.

Average customer rating:

A thriller, not a great one, but a thriller nonetheless
not quite as good as the original film
YOUNG AND FOOLISH
watchable
Stick with the Original

A Kiss Before Dying
Starring: James Bonfanti , Sarah Keller , Sean Young , Martha Gehman , and Lia Chang
Director: James Dearden
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0003JANWS
Release Date: 2004-12-28

Description

Matt Dillon, Sean Young and Max Von Sydow star in this chilling romantic thriller from writer-director James Dearden (Fatal Attraction). Troubled by the death of her twin sister, Ellen Carlson (Young) unwittingly falls in love with an ambitious young man, Jonathan Corliss (Dillon). As she investigates Dorothy's death, a chance encounter reveals how little Ellen really knows about her husband, and what she doesn't know may kill her in this heart-stopping suspense thriller based on Ira Levin's best-selling novel.

Customer Reviews:

A thriller, not a great one, but a thriller nonetheless.......2007-07-16

This is the type of movie that separates me from most movie critics. They said this was awful, poorly directed, incompetently acted, foolishly presented and an insult to the 1956 original and book. One critic went so far as to say Sean Young played two roles (twins) which gave her the opportunity to play two roles poorly.

I don't argue with any of that. My wife guessed one of the principal clues about 5 mintues into the movie. However, I have to say this movie was interesting from the opening scene and it kept me and my wife involved throughout. It may have been bad but it was effective. It had great studio values and the overly dramatic musical score gave some scenes an affect they didn't have otherwise. Its violent scenes had more of a surreal-life 1970s aura than the cliinically, computer graphic displayed overlay of a 1990s movie. It is also the first film I've ever seen where a train runs over someone (not too graphically).

If you haven't seen "A Kiss Before Dying", the story involves a disturbed young man (Matt Dillon) who romances one sister, then her twin, (and kills a few people in the process) to gain access to her rich dad's wealth. It's taken from a popular 1950s book by Ira Levin and this is the second film treatment, the first coming in 1956 with then-young Robert Wagner in the role of the psycho.

Critics everywhere lamabasted this film as being inane, overdone, sophomoric and so excessively violent it bordered on exploitation. All I can say about that is I tried to watch "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" the night before and was so bored by the silly thing I turned it off after a half-hour. Meanwhile, I stood attentive to "A Kiss Before Dying" to the bitter end, which I might add introduces questions not resolved during the story.

Maybe this says something about my taste in movies. I'm betting it also says something about the entertainment values in films and I think there's more of it in this one than a lot of people want to admit.

not quite as good as the original film.......2007-05-12

This movie is a remake of an earlier one. The origi nal was far better...
better script, acting, and atmosphere.

YOUNG AND FOOLISH.......2005-03-26

Sean Young is the main reason this adaptation of the classic novel and 1956 film doesn't come up to snuff. She's a lovely lady, but her performance in this one is so uninspired and apathetic, one cannot feel for her or cheer her on in her quest to find out who murdered her twin sister. The audience knows early on that Matt Dillon is the nasty culprit, a true sociopath who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. A contrived and convoluted script doesn't help either. For instance, after Young finds out who her husband really is, what makes her sure that he killed her sister? And how does Dillon know that Young is at his mother's house? The supporting cast gamely tries, even Diane Ladd as Dillon's mother, and James Russo as a cop turned security guard. But it's all laid out so methodically lame, it just doesn't work out. By the time Dillon gets his just desert, who really cares?

watchable .......2005-03-15

but just that. As a thriller, it has a long way to go, largely because of a bad script and medicore acting. Sean Young is so average it's sad. You can't tell if her character is grieving, scheming, uncaring or just plain stupid in many parts. Matt Dillon tried hard, but he also couldn't rise about his level of mediocrity. Still, as noted earlier, it's watchable as opposed to a complete piece of trash.

Stick with the Original.......2005-03-14

Yet another example of Hollywood's inability to come up with original material. Ira Levin's novel (even Ayn Rand liked it!) had been effectively adapted for the screen in 1956 but heaven forbid that the urge to fix things unbroken should remain unfulfilled! "Fixing," in this case, includes gimmicks. Instead of two mere sisters we have...ta DA!...IDENTICAL TWINS! And not merely content to have a psycho male character, why not have the normal female character played by a real-life SUSPECTED psycho?! Sean Young has given me the creeps since No Way Out, and it seems my hunch was justified; I later read assertions of some pretty bizarre behavior (it has been my experience that where smoke is evident, fire must be nearby). In addition, we have the antagonist staging his own death to throw his mama off the track, a cigarette lighter, ...you get the idea.
Unlike the (much more tasteful) original, this film is sometimes explicitly sexual, so if viewing AKBD is, for some reason, essential to your well-being and titillation is a priority, go for this one by all means, especially if fidelity to the source material isn't important (be aware, though, that it's much less suspenseful than the original). The print looks and sounds good and is widescreen, so things could be worse (I guess).
Speaking of weirdness, just to give you an idea of what we're dealing with here, either Young has managed to channel Virginia Leith (the original's female lead) or is bending over backwards to sound just like her. Imitation is most often NOT the sincerest form of flattery; not only is lifting someone else's style cheap and indicative of a lack of talent and/or incentive, it's just REALLY creepy.
Rental material, for sure.

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