APOLOGY FOR MURDER (1945)

Wealthy businessman Harvey Kirkland is engineering a merger with a company run by his old friend Craig Jordan. Jordan's not happy about it, and in fact is overheard making a veiled threat of violence against Kirkland, but he realizes he has to accept the offer.  Reporter Kenny Blake (Hugh Beaumont, at right), who has a kind of love-hate relationship with his editor, comes to the Kirkland residence hoping to get an interview and is rebuffed, but he winds up flirting with Toni (Ann Savage), a young woman whom Kenny assumes is Kirkland's daughter. After a one-afternoon stand, she tells him she's actually Kirkland’s wife, frustrated over being stuck in a bad marriage. The old man fights her attempts at divorce, so she tells Kenny she's decided to kill her husband, but she needs Kenny to help her. Initially shocked, Kenny soon warms to the idea and the two engineer an elaborate plan to kill him and making it look like his car went sliding off a treacherous mountain road. After some complications, the two pull it off, but when the police discover that there are no tire tracks and the ignition in the car was off, they suspect foul play. So does Kenny's editor.

Though it may not be crystal clear from that summary, you can tell by the 10-minute mark that this is an unauthorized remake of DOUBLE INDEMNITY, the classic film noir made the year before. Young totsy wants to get rid of frustrating husband, seduces lust-dumb guy into helping her, then more or less dumps him while his boss begins to put two and two together. Here, the dumping is more explicit—after the murder, Toni seduces a lawyer to help her get a better deal out of her dead husband's estate—and an innocent man (Kirkland’s caretaker) winds up being found guilty of the murder, putting more pressure on the typically decent Kenny to find a way out of the nightmare he's in. This film even copies the tic from the earlier film of having Kenny's boss lighting Kenny's cigarettes for him. Hugh Beaumont is a B-movie Fred MacMurray (and both men would find lasting fame playing sit-com dads on TV; Beaumont on Leave it to Beaver, MacMurray on My Three Sons. Oddly, in this movie, Beaumont’s editor is named Ward, which would be the name of Beaumont's character on Beaver.) At one hour, this moves fairly quickly, but the constant callbacks to Double Indemnity don't do this film any favors. Beaumont is OK, though Savage (known for her hardened femme fatale part in DETOUR) operates at half-strength, diminishing some of the impact of the film. It's kind of fun, but ultimately disappointing. [YouTube]