Waste of time

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The acting in this movie is really good.

A B-movie and something of a small classic comparable to Melville's "Le Samourai" which it may have influenced. Vince Edwards in his pre-Ben Casey days is the young man who actually wants to be a contract killer and the movie is about his somewhat clinical initiation into the job. Superbly written by Ben Simcoe, brilliantly photographed in black and white by Lucien Ballard and with a terrific yet simple score by Perry Botkin this movie comes close to perfection. It was directed by Irving Lerner who up to then hadn't really done anything of note, (perhaps he was just waiting for the right material). Edwards is superb as the almost overly confident killer who comes undone when he has to kill a woman. It's a very simple picture, in which almost all the killings are kept off-screen concentrating instead on the killer's psychology and how he goes about his work. Never a commercial success it has now build up a considerable cult following.

Murder by Contract is directed by Irving Lerner and written by Ben Simcoe. It stars Vince Edwards, Philip Pine, Michael Granger, Caprice Toriel and Herschel Bernardi. Music is by Perry Botkin and cinematography by Lucien Ballard.Claude (Edwards) one day decides he's had enough of being a regular Joe earning regular Joe wages. He decides to become a hit man, and after enacting a few clinical kills he works his way into the confidence of the mysterious Mr. Brink. This earns him a "big hit" in Los Angeles, where he is to snuff out the main witness in a big upcoming trial. All is going well until he finds out the target is a woman, so where once Claude was calm and assured, he now becomes irritable and irked......With the help of its appearance on the Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics DVD set, and a certain Martin Scorsese proclaiming it as one of the biggest influences on his career, Murder by Contract is getting the exposure it so dearly deserves. An odd, even kooky, type of noir flavoured picture, it's a film that is like many of the late 50s film noirs that don't have the classic noir look. It's light, airy and set predominantly on the salty sea climes of the West Coast of America. It's with the characters, or in this case mainly the central character, where many of these "lighter" shot 50s crime movies get their noir worth. And Murder by Contract is a beaut in that respect.He doesn't like guns!For two parts of the running time it's a film oozing a sense of cool. Claude proves to be a calm and methodical protagonist, his dialogue sparkles with intelligence and sophistication, he knows the world and his place within it. Words like existentialism and spare, the latter of which Scorsese uses a lot, are words bandied about frequently in conjunction with Lerner's (City of Fear) movie. Those words signify how much of a great job Lerner and Ballard did, where shot in 7 days with a minimal budget they have crafted a picture of unique quality, where maximum impact is garnered from such minimal space and sequences. Perry Botkin's score also aids the oddness on offer, predominantly electric guitar based, it's a fusion of The Third Man and Zorba the Greek, unsettling and at odds with a hit man based yarn, yet sneakily putting a sense of disquiet into the mix.I don't like pigs!It's with the last third where film really comes alive, both physically and psychologically. Once Claude gets to Los Angeles and hooks up with Mr. Brink's men, Marc (Pine) & George (Bernardi), who are babysitting him while he enacts the hit, things change drastically. Marc and George are in turn fascinated and irritated by Claude's calmness, tagging along as Claude takes in the sights, gets a bit of R&R and generally chills out. But then it's revealed that the target is a woman and Claude changes, he become unglued. He tells all that a woman is not dependable, he wants double the money or he's not doing it. It's then where we realise there's Freudian repressions lurking underneath the once icy calm exterior. We recall his outburst upon finding lipstick on a cup, his irritation at the party girl sent to his room for company, again lipstick an issue. There's emotional scars and these are further given a scrape during the finale as Claude desperately tries to finish the job, his repressions leading to classic film noir closure.A terrific little B noir, excellently constructed and acted, with dashes of uniqueness and sly characterisations. 8.5/10

"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.

Dreadful film with Vince Edwards as a smooth, unfeeling, hit man. He has a job with a pension but needs more money to buy his dream house.Edwards is as dull as the film. He comes off as an uncaring, robot-like individual. He kills for the sake of killing. He seems to be smart and so sure of himself. The latter leads to his downfall at the end.The dialogue and the 2 characters with him during his stay in Los Angeles come off as comedic at best. I thought the film would turn into comedy as Edwards is unable to kill the government witness. This film would have been far better had we known something more about the witness and the man she was going to testify against. What did he do? What's going on here? Very little according to my perspective.