Joseph Cotten and Jean Peters star in A Blueprint For Murder a nice tight noir thriller for 20th Century Fox. This film starts with the death of Cotten's niece and Peters stepdaughter. Despite some major flaws the film does proceed to a tension building climax.
For one thing the fact that a healthy 17 year old girl dying suddenly and mysteriously would have set off alarm bells. My 34 year old sister who died suddenly and of natural causes had an immediate autopsy ordered by the New York City Medical Examiner. It's no different in Los Angeles and that would have shown the strychnine poisoning. Cotten would have had to do nothing to get the investigative ball rolling.
But the premise here is that murder by poison is hard to detect and more difficult to prove. People have accidentally taken poison all the time. Even with a lack of evidence Cotten persuades the District Attorney to bring an indictment and it's thrown out of court due to lack of evidence. That's the second flaw in this film, double jeopardy should have attached to Peters.
Still Cotten persists and the film comes to a climax with he and Peters in a duel of nerves. What Cotten does is take one long chance with his own freedom to prove Peters guilty of murder. What he does is something you see A Blueprint For Murder.
I can't forgive the bad writing and faulty legal premises on which this film rests. Still it is enjoyable on its own level.
For one thing the fact that a healthy 17 year old girl dying suddenly and mysteriously would have set off alarm bells. My 34 year old sister who died suddenly and of natural causes had an immediate autopsy ordered by the New York City Medical Examiner. It's no different in Los Angeles and that would have shown the strychnine poisoning. Cotten would have had to do nothing to get the investigative ball rolling.
But the premise here is that murder by poison is hard to detect and more difficult to prove. People have accidentally taken poison all the time. Even with a lack of evidence Cotten persuades the District Attorney to bring an indictment and it's thrown out of court due to lack of evidence. That's the second flaw in this film, double jeopardy should have attached to Peters.
Still Cotten persists and the film comes to a climax with he and Peters in a duel of nerves. What Cotten does is take one long chance with his own freedom to prove Peters guilty of murder. What he does is something you see A Blueprint For Murder.
I can't forgive the bad writing and faulty legal premises on which this film rests. Still it is enjoyable on its own level.