Such a frustrating disappointment

A Disappointing Continuation

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

After a young girl dies, suspicion quickly develops that she was poisoned, and therefore murdered. The girl's uncle, played by Joseph Cotten, tries to make sense of the strange occurrences surrounding the girl's death, helped along by a couple of friendly sleuths. Brisk and efficient, the plot zips right along without distracting elements."A Blueprint For Murder" is easy to follow. It's basically a murder mystery. But because there are not a lot of suspects or twists, the story is more believable than traditional whodunits. Most scenes take place indoors, on sets.Casting and acting are fine. B&W lighting is conventional but competent. Minimal background music enhances a sense of realism.My only serious problem is the ending. It's long and drawn-out, and weak. Part of the fault may lie with the directing. But I think the script bears most of the responsibility. I don't recall a film story that displayed such an unwavering trajectory. That's good in that the story is believable. It's not so good in that the story ends with a whimper instead of a bang.This is a good film to watch for puzzle lovers who find traditional murder mysteries confusing and hard to follow. The opposite is the case here. What you get is a reasonably high-quality production that is entertaining up until the last fifteen minutes or so.

Interesting film soon falls flat. Joseph Cotten, a reserved heavy smoking businessman, shows up just in time when his young niece dies suddenly in the hospital. Joe's brother and sister-in-law are already gone, and before his death, the brother had remarried the lovely Jean Peters. A young nephew survives.What seems to be a routine tragedy soon develops into murder by poisoning. When it becomes obvious that Peters has killed her step-daughter, Cotten and others must prove it and at the same time protect the young nephew from the conniving killer.The film falls flat once Cotten follows Peters and the young nephew on to a boat where she is taking the young lad to see Europe and probably come to his death.Cotten's scheme is to kill his sister-in-law before she kills the little boy. Far-fetched but not out of the realm of a world gone crazy is the plot to this film. The entire problem here is that it's almost impossible for anyone to pin the murder on Peters.It appears that after supposedly poisoning Miss Peters at the end, Cotten seems to have gone awry. The poison doesn't seem to be working proving that those aspirins with the w on them weren't poison after all. ...But were they?

While not a great film by any means, A BLUEPRINT FOR MURDER offers some very fine moments of suspense and is a very good B movie. (B movies are usually never over 90 mins). The two stars acquit themselves well, especially Jean Peters, and underrated actress of the 50's and 50's. (See VICKI as well). The pacing is fine, but the ending needed a little more zip. For a while the movie has the viewer coming and going as to what really happened to the husband and little girl, both who died under mysterious circumstances. This makes a fine double bill with the above mentioned VICKI. Being a fan of Jean Peters, Fox should release a couple of other films she made for them, namely TAKE CARE OF MY LITTLE GIRL.

This is a somewhat unusual programmer from 1953. Big name actors with tons of acting ability star in what appears to be a typical B movie, Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters, Gary Merrill. The way the murder mystery is handled by writer-director Andrew L. Stone is also somewhat unusual. The audience has the prime suspect from the very beginning of the film. The questions unanswered to the very end are: Did Lynne Cameron (Jean Peters) really kill her husband and stepdaughter? Is she planning to kill her stepson? Joseph Cotten, who plays Lynne's brother-in-law tries to prove that she did and that she is. The viewer has to answer another question. Is Whitney 'Cam' Cameron (Joseph Cotten) the real murderer trying to put the blame on his sister-in-law? Is he actually playing another Uncle Charlie type character similar to his role in Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt?" This all makes for a nifty little thriller. The movie speeds along at a leisurely pace but never becomes boring. Not a bad way to spend 77 minutes.