Best movie of this year hands down!

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Waste of time

Sorry, this movie sucks

"Payment Deferred" drips with melodrama and moral rectitude, but it's still worth seeing. Charles Laughton plays the part of William Marble, a wretched bank clerk whose debts drive him to a desperate act. Laughton reprises the role he first played on stage, which may be the reason for his overly broad portrayal and his lack of subtlety. Still, Laughton is always fun to watch.Ray Milland--so young you might not recognize him--plays Marble's long lost relative who comes to visit. Maureen O'Sullivan plays Winnie Marble, the self-centered daughter who craves money so she can look down on those who have always looked down on her.It's a simple story that rarely ventures from the confines of the Marble household, but it demonstrates what passed for a crime story in 1932. Later, despite the Hayes code, Hitchcock and others would produce crime stories with more psychological subtlety and those that live in the gray areas of moral uncertainty.

"Payment Deferred" is, to my mind at least, something of an anomaly; a pennydreadful murder melodrama that appears to have been transmuted, almost intact, from its stage origins onto the silver screen. What makes the movie fascinating is the degree to which the estimable cast utilizes the gestural and vocal histrionics of stage acting in a cinematic context. Whether this was a conscious choice on the part of the director, Lothar Mendes or whether the over-the-top filmscript simply encouraged the frenzied scenery chewing that ensues, is debatable. But, alas, it doesn't quite add up. All the actors (and they are good ones, too) pitch into their parts as if they're being urged, offscreen, to "play to the balcony." But a movie isn't a live play and the shrieking, the sobbing and the swank of guilt and remorse that might play before theatrical footlights and a live audience seem both affected and slightly risible here. I have a very high regard for Charles Laughton, and his yawps and bellows in this movie are certainly not boring to watch, but -- by the end of the movie -- I found myself unable to muster up either belief in his character (let alone the other characters) nor emotional catharsis at the end to which he comes. And melodrama (whether live or filmed) that fails to tug on our emotions is, for lack of a better term, failure.

In "Payment Deferred", Charles Laughton plays a mousy bank employee in severe financial crisis. In fact, unless he clears up his debts FAST, his boss has threatened to fire him. However, when his nephew from Australia (Ray Milland) shows up soon after, Laughton thinks he can get some money from this rich young man to bail him out of his problems. But Laughton comes on WAY too strong and frightens Milland--and there's no way he'll help Laughton. So, on the spur of the moment, Laughton offers Milland some poisoned whiskey and then robs his corpse--thus alleviating his debts.At this point, I thought the movie was very good. However, during the next portion of the film, Laughton's character is very inconsistent--one minute paranoid and on edge and the next, cold and at ease. To me this is a serious problem because he also goes from loving husband to unfaithful jerk--and it seemed more a plot device than anything else since it was not consistent with his character. And much of this final portion of the film was very good (such as what happened to his wife) some was pretty bad (emotionally he was a yo-yo--too much so). Frankly, his performance seemed, at times, over-the-top.I enjoyed "Payment Deferred" and do recommend it. However, I couldn't help but see a few shortcomings in this film because a dozen years later, Charles Laughton made another similar film but it was so much better. Unlike "Payment Deferred", "The Suspect" was perfect...or darn close. The biggest differences was that in "The Suspect" the audience really likes Laughton's character--he's a very good person who just happens to kill people--people that REALLY need it and you feel he is morally justified for his actions. However, in "Payment Deferred", Laughton is just an evil and selfish man--and the audience is NOT drawn to like him. My advice is see "The Suspect" and, if you are still inclined, try "Payment Deferred".

***MAJOR SPOILERS*** Crime & Punishment movie having to do with how justice works in strange and unusual ways in bringing the guilty to pay for their crimes. In this case William Mable, Charles Laughton, a man who got away with murder but was convicted and sent to the gallows for a murder, or really death, that he in fact didn't commit.Deep in debt and with no way out of his pressing financial problems William has his nephew from far off Australia James Medland, Ray Milland, show up at his dilapidated house, that he's behind in the rent, for a visit. Seeing that James has a wad of bills, in the hundreds of pounds, in his wallet William tries to talk him into going partners with him in the superlative British Foreign Exchange Currency Market. The overbearing William really gets under the good natured James skin who tells him to kindly get lost and stop bothering him with his both wild and cockamamie money schemes.Desperately wanting to get his hands on James cash William, in an effort to let bygones be bygones, offers him a departing drink that he secretly lased with deadly cyanide. Gulping the drink down in one shot James soon becomes history as well as part, in being buried there, of the Mable's backyard.Keeping both his wife Anne, Dorothy Peterson,and daughter Winnie, Maureen O'Sullivan, as well as the the police in the dark to James' fate it soon becomes evident that William in fact got away with murder. William got a bit lucky in the Foreign Exchange Market parlaying James stolen 100 pounds to an astonishing 30,000 in less then a month! With everything going great for him William falls victim to his next door neighbor clothing store owner Maggie Collins, Verree Teasdale, who's been eying the big oaf when she got wind that he was riding the gravy train as a result of the money he made in the market.Taking advantage of a lonely William, with his both wife and daughter away on vacation, Maggie seduced the big lug and later used the fact that he cheated on his wife Anne to blackmail him. Anne, suspecting something, who only thought that William embezzled the bank that he work at got the shock of her life when she caught William and Maggie smooching in the family living room! This while she was both sick and bedridden with pneumonia upstairs in the master bedroom!***SPOILERS*** Greatly depressed in the fact that her loyal and caring husband is cheating on her Anne took a drink of juice laced with cyanide and ended up dead the same way James, involuntarily, did. Arrested in is wife's murder William could only wait and face the music, or hangman, in a murder that he didn't commit but one that he did and got away with. In fact the strange fate of William Marble turned out to be a twisted case of poetic justice if there ever was one!