Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Did you people see the same film I saw?

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

This is a 20th Century Fox Film-Noir starring Joseph Cotten as Whitney Cameron with quite a quandary. No question that his sister-in-law Lynn (Jean Peters) is beautiful, outgoing...but just how trustworthy. Faithful and true comes to question when her husband and then her stepdaughter die mysteriously. Whitney, much to his displeasure, is forced to be suspicious of Lynn and her immediate actions. Will his fondness for her cloud his ability to act quickly enough to possibly prevent more killings? Scratch your head and wonder. Written and directed by Andrew L. Stone this BLUEPRINT for MURDER is worth watching. Well acted and sustainable atmosphere. The cast also includes: Gary Merrill, Jack Kruschen, Catherine McLeod, Barney Phillips, Herbert Butterfield and Freddy Ridgeway.

In this offbeat but very enjoyable crime thriller, a couple of mysterious deaths in the same family raise fears for the safety of a child and suspicions of murder that are hard to prove. The story is given its momentum initially by a quick series of interesting revelations and then later, by the urgency with which it becomes necessary to act in order to ensure that no harm comes to the apparently endangered child.Having been notified that his young niece Polly is seriously ill, businessman Whitney "Cam" Cameron (Joseph Cotten) rushes to the hospital where she's being treated and is relieved when he's told that she seems to be making a successful recovery. He's troubled by the fact that her doctor is unable to make a definite diagnosis of what she's suffering from but, in the circumstances, returns with his widowed sister-in-law Lynne (Jean Peters), to her home where he gets reacquainted with his young nephew Doug (Freddy Ridgeway). Doug (who's Lynne's stepson) is upset about his sister's suffering, especially because she'd kept saying "don't touch my feet" and this reminded him of his father uttering the same words when he was ill with a similar mystery illness from which he never recovered. Cam is very fond of both Lynne and Doug and is later distressed when Polly suffers a relapse and dies.Later, Cam goes to visit his old friend and family lawyer, Fred Sargent (Gary Merrill) and his wife Maggie (Catherine McLeod). During one of their conversations, Maggie remarks that from her research as a writer for the "pulps", Polly's symptoms were similar to those suffered by people who'd been poisoned with strychnine and as Cam's brother Bill had died in similar circumstances, this possibility should be considered. Cam and Fred initially laugh off Maggie's observations but then Fred (in a later conversation) adds that under the terms of Bill's will, Lynne would only be able to inherit his estate if both his children had died before receiving their inheritances. Maggie also then remarks that her research had shown that most cases of killing by poison never actually lead to a conviction.This information and the results of an autopsy carried out on Polly's body make Cam very suspicious of Lynne's role in Bill and Polly's deaths and extremely anxious about the welfare of his nephew, Doug. His concerns are then heightened further when Lynne announces that she intends to take Doug on a trip to Europe for about a year. Without giving them any indications of his intentions, Cam simply turns up on the ocean liner which is taking Lynne and Doug to Europe and carries out an elaborate plan to discover whether or not his suspicions about Lynne (who was his brother's second wife) and his concern for Doug are indeed justified.Despite its modest budget, straightforward plot and relatively short running time, "A Blueprint For Murder" generates plenty of suspense and intrigue especially because pieces of information emerge at different times that throw doubt on Lynne's guilt. Probably the movie's greatest asset though is its cast who are consistently good. The ever-reliable Joseph Cotten is marvellous as the kind and well-mannered Cam and Jean Peters gives a compelling performance as the sophisticated socialite whose composure always seems unshakeable. Gary Merrill and Catherine McLeod are also very good in their key supporting roles.

If noir is at its best when giving us believability in slightly unbelievable situations, this one falls a little short of the standard. We've got cool as ice upper crust citizens here figuring to murder family members as if they were all from some neighborhood where life was cheap, while hardly batting an eye. The acting is good, and Jean Peters and Catherine McLeod are especially fascinating females, but the plot just has a few too many holes in it. IMO, this sort of thing works better when a movie is taken from a novel, a narrative that some previous writer has thoroughly worked out and thought through. And who is the sexy gal in her slip gracing all the posters, like Jean Peters would probably refuse to do? Eye-catching, to be sure, but what has she got to do with a movie that has probably less sexual action in it than a girl scout camp in the middle of a hot summer night? Overall, substandard for the genre, but an hour's entertainment for addicted noir buffs like me, so don't let anything I say keep you from enjoying it............Garman Lord

A Blueprint for Murder (1953)A clean, old-fashioned murder mystery, brightly lit, and even including a voyage on a cruise ship to Europe like some Betty Davis movie, or Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. It's a crime standard at the end of the film noir era, with a terrific star who never quite fit into any genre very well, Joseph Cotten. It's smart and fast and strong and almost believable, at least until the drawing room high stakes of the end, which is just great movie-making. Cotten plays Whitney Cameron, and he's visiting his niece in the hospital. Quick facts pour on (and are slightly hard to follow at first): she has some strange affliction, her father (Cameron's brother) died of a strange affliction a few years earlier, and the stepmother is sweet as cherry pie, though she plays a demonically fierce romantic piano. Then the niece suddenly dies, and before Cameron leaves the scene, suspicions arise about the stepmother.By the way, stepmothers can do terrible things that mothers would never do to their own children, like murder them. And so we are led down that obvious path. Soon, however, we know that the movie can't be quite that simple, and another suspect clarifies. The view is left deciding who is playing the better game of "not me." It's good stuff, very good, though constrained and reasonable, too. We don't always want "reasonable" in a film.The stepmother is excellent, played by Jean Peters, and a helping couple is also first rate, especially Gary Merrill as a lawyer friend. Merrill was in "Where the Sidewalk Ends" and "All About Eve," and is partly why those are great films. Peters plays the cheerful innocent here just as she did in a another pair of masterpieces, "Niagara" (with Cotten) and "Pickup on South Street" (a true noir from the same year as this one). It's Cotten who drives the movie, however, and he has a tone rather similar to his similar "visiting uncle" role in "Shadow of a Doubt." He is, in fact, a kind of soft-spoken, dependable icon in many movies (and later lots of t.v.) and it's because he's so normal that I think he's less adored. But he's exactly what the movie needs, guiding us first through the police investigation and then the informal one of his own. It had the makings of a tightly woven classic.Why are there so many films that are quite good but not amazing? I think a little of everything, often, but here it's the story itself that is limiting. A great idea, surely, but a little too familiar in its basic plot, and quite simple. A second plot, or another suspect, or another murder along the way would have been just fine. I think the directing (by Andrew Stone) is competent but lacks vision, and an unwillingness to push the edges a little. It proceeds, and we don't want movies to simply move along. There are, however, some excellent scenes, like one in the police office early on where the two leading men are led from one desk to another, from one group of cops to another, in a flowing, backward moving long take. It's a lesson in first rate cinematography, actually. And in fact the movie is totally enjoyable, never slow, expertly done, with a good cast.