Murder by Contract / Spanish Subtitles / Asesinato por contrato / Subtitulos en Español {1958}
Murder by Contract is a 1958 American film noir crime film directed by Irving Lerner. Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Ben Maddow did uncredited work on the film. Centering on an existentialist hit man assigned to kill a woman, the film is often praised for its spare style and peculiar sense of cool.
The film has exerted an influence on American cinema, most notably on director Martin Scorsese, who famously cited Murder by Contract as “the film that has influenced [him] most.”
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Cast:
Vince Edwards as Claude
Phillip Pine as Marc
Herschel Bernardi as George
Caprice Toriel as Billie Williams
Michael Granger as Mr. Moon
Cathy Browne as Mary
Joseph Mell as Harry
Frances Osborne as Miss Wiley
Steven Ritch as plainclothesman
Janet Brandt as woman in movie theater
Davis Roberts as clerk
Don Garrett as James William Mayflower
Gloria Victor as Miss Wexley
Cisco Houston as rifle salesman (uncredited)
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Plot (May Contain Spoilers):
Claude (Vince Edwards) is a disaffected man who, in search of fast money to purchase a $28,000 house, decides to become a contract killer for a Mr. Brink. After proving his worth by killing targets in a barber shop and a hospital for a Mr. Moon (Michael Granger), whom he then kills at Brink’s behest, Claude is given a contract to kill a witness in a high-profile trial, which starts in two weeks in Los Angeles.
At first calm about the assignment, spending the first several days sightseeing to check if his handlers, George (Herschel Bernardi) and Marc (Phillip Pine), are being followed, Claude becomes agitated when he discovers the witness in question is a woman, Billie Williams (Caprice Toriel); in his opinion, women are harder to kill than men, because they are “unpredictable”. Claude scrambles to find a way to kill Billie, who never leaves her closely guarded house. After two attempts, Claude believes he has killed her, but later discovers that he mistakenly killed a policewoman instead, and the police have covered it up to avoid further attempts on Billie’s life.
Out of ideas and convinced the contract is “jinxed”, Claude quits, only to find George and Marc have now been instructed to kill him. After killing the men, Claude finally succeeds in sneaking into Billie’s house via a culvert, but hesitates when he is about to strangle her. The police arrive; Claude attempts to escape via the culvert but is killed in a shoot-out.
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