Popular reviews

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  Review by josh lewis ★★★★

  "the only type of killing that's safe is when a stranger kills a stranger. no motive. nothing to link the victim to the executioner. now why would a stranger kill a stranger? because somebody's willing to pay. it's business. same as any other business. you murder the competition. instead of price-cutting, throat-cutting. same thing."

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  Review by Ben Hibburd ★★★★ 4

  "Murder by Contract" is regarded by Martin Scorsese as the film that has influenced him the most and it's clear to see why. It's a cool, stylish noir that was ahead of its time and it's clear to see it's influence on films like "L'assassino" and "Taxi Driver" to name but a few.

  Vince Edwards has a magnetic screen presence in this film. He plays an ice cool calculating hit-man named Claude. Claude's trying to break into the murder for hire business, rather than spending the next 20+ years working a regular job in order to buy a house. Claude is methodical and precise in his business never allowing for emotion to get in his way. He never uses a…

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  Review by Slig001 ★★★★½ 2

  This is a superb suspense thriller! Murder by Contract is a lean, efficent little B-movie focusing on a contract killer as he attempts to carry out a hit on a female target. The film is way ahead of its time - taking obvious influence from the European films of the same era. There's a real sense of nihilism pervading the whole thing. The central character is a real piece of work - a smart guy who looks at his work like a business. The film delights in showcasing him, musing over various aspects of his philosophy. The film would have been held back by the censors - but it has a real dark edge to it; a few scenes towards…

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★ 2

  Taking some cues from the Ealing Studios humor (especially The Ladykillers), this is a fun film noir of sorts about a hitman whose hired to take down a woman, but what seems like an easy job turns into a big hassle when the target proves to be much luckier and smarter than them all.

  Vince Edwards is a delight on this role and brings some great fun, but also shows his menacing side from time to time. His handlers played by Herschel Bernardi and Phillip Pine are also a blast and adds much to the entertaining value. The film is also very well directed, with the editing and cinematography coming together to build some tension, while the quirky score with…

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  Review by RanchoTuVu ★★★★½

  It's interesting maybe to put this film in the perspective of the late 1950s because it seems influenced by "the Beat Generation" of the era, people who had distanced themselves from what the USA was becoming, one big suburb full of identical tract houses. Vince Edwards looks pretty cool in shades, but he's not sitting around playing bongos in a coffee house. He's a dropout from the mass conformity taking place around him where the average pay is about 75 dollars a week, plus a pension plan and fringe benefits. Rather than recite poetry, however, he embarks on a new career as a contract killer working his way up to a job in LA where the big boss has sent…

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  Review by KYK ★★★★ 2

  queen of staying home

  queen of staying alive

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  Review by laird ★★★★

  I Heard You Buy Houses

  A hitman with a cool, creepy detatched psychopathy driven by economic ambition and a superiority complex drives around L.A. lecturing waiters and secretaries about hard work, economic darwinism, and the financial downside of having emotions. Like Ayn Rand writing a Thomas Ripley story.

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  Review by sakana1 ★★★★ 11

  Vague spoilers in the last paragraph.

  Directed by Irving Lerner and shot in just over a week by master cinematographer Lucien Ballard, Murder by Contract was clearly influenced by Lerner's past work on documentaries, presenting events with a disciplined, emotional distance that mirrors that of Claude (Vince Edward), the self-consciously chilly hitman at the heart of the film. But there's style in Lerner's and Ballard's work, too, as well as an intriguing tendency toward the dehumanization of its characters by an uncanny focus on body parts — most often feet and legs, but sometimes hands, as well. The anonymity of those isolated features is closely connected to the character of Claude, and his determination to avoid being co-opted by mainstream,…

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  Review by RetroHound ★★★½ 2

  A guy decides to become a hitman. Working for $72 a week isn't going to get him the house he wants on the Ohio River. (The house he wants is $28,000!) He meets the right people and starts doing jobs. One of which was quite a surprise.

  He does nice work, so he's sent out to Los Angeles to get a witness for a case against his boss. This part is a little weird, he just goes around and sees the sights for several days before even bothering to find out who the mark is. He has two guys whose job is to give him the info and make sure he has whatever he needs and gets the job done.…

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  Review by Brian Formo ★★★★½ 2

  Low budget b-noir is truly wondrous when it works and Murder by Contract is one of the best examples of it working. The story is economical—a hitman (Vince Edwards) takes a job and takes his time to assess the situation and then asks for double the money when he learns that he's supposed to assassinate a woman—which affords a lane for a more darkly comical caper. The majority of the film is an odd couple triangle between the killer and his two handlers, one (Herschel Bernardi) who never was schooled past third grade and thinks the hitman's a genius and another (Phillip Pine) who thinks he lacks professionalism and is extending the job to be a tourist in LA when…

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  Review by Channing Pomeroy ★★★½ 1

  I have a feeling that hitmen — like quicksand — are a lot more common in movies than in real life. As a vocation the hitman holds an outsized influence on American movies, just as this particular hitman film has for Martin Scorsese. In his Personal Journey he describes drawing heavily on three late-50s movements: the European cinema of Antonioni, Bergman, Godard; home-grown Cassavetes independents; and B-gangster pictures. He describes this odd B-film as having the spareness of Antonioni with a strange Mediterranean score and characters bound together in a Beckettian circle of fate.

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  Review by Geoffrey Broomer ★★★½ 2

  Vince Edwards (Ben Casey) is a hitman. With two weeks until his target is set to testify against his mobster employer, Edwards takes in the sights and pontificates existential ideals with his increasingly frustrated handlers. Over half the film is Edwards interactions with his thuggish contacts - the abrasive Phillip Pine and understanding Herschel Bernardi. This is where Murder by Contract shines, with the three having wonderful chemistry. It is easy to see the influence on Martin Scorsese (who has championed the film) - with Pine's pushy bravado informing more than one Joe Pesci character.

  There are noirs with wittier banter and superior set pieces - but the criminal interactions are unique, and make for a film that is as memorable as it is cool.