Excellent but underrated film

Absolutely the worst movie.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The UK Forestry Commission kept the British Film industry supplied with a constant stream of wooden actors throughout the forties and fifties - Richard Todd, John Gregson, Richard Pasco, Kieron Moore, Anthony Steele, not forgetting, of course, Derek Farr who takes one of the four roles in this quasi-thriller based on a play by J. Lee Thompson and marking his directing debut. Although someone has seen fit to employ a narrator to top and tail the proceedings they have not seen fit to afford him a credit. Although Thompson 'opens it out' a tad its stage origins are evident and it relies a tad too much on legerdemain, nevertheless it does entertain and offers a glimpse of two actresses who never quite fulfilled their early promise; Patrica Plunkett more or less petered out whilst Joan Dowling committed suicide in the wake of her husband's unfaithfulness. The husband was Harry Fowler and both had found early success as child actors in Hue and Cry and though Fowler survived his wife and remarried he never fulfilled his own early promise despite appearing in several more films. Murder Without Crime remains a curio which is well worth watching.

I wonder whether scriptwriters take it upon themselves to insert a narrator into a script or if a producer does this to bolster a weak script.It can work e.g. Murder My Sweet but invariably it does not.I don't think that anything could save this film from mediocrity.Mind you the script seems to have taken ideas from Rope and the director the tilted camera angles from that Third Man.One of the big problems of this film is that characters are continually jumping to the wrong conclusions.Dennis Price does his usual character of a down at heels blackmailed.However his appearance in this film is evidence of his declining career.Apart from the deficiencies of the plot,this film could have made a good radio play.The director would go on to bigger and better films.

Slow-moving and stagey, but interesting "B" movie with arresting camera-work by Bill McLeod, plus the baroque finery of Jon Ashton's inspired art direction. Lee-Thompson's screenplay has overtones of "Rope", and one could not wish for a more ironic climax. However, 97 minutes is a little too long to spend with only four characters – especially as two of them are absent for much of the time, allowing the film to develop as a rather self-indulgent duologue. The movie is also saddled with an ill-advised and utterly phoney Pete Smith narration. Nevertheless, it has many good moments – plus, as noted above, Ashton's inspired sets. It's mighty unusual to find Ashton working on a "B"-budget movie (even though its running time puts it right out of the "B" line-up), but this was his debut assignment as an art director.

MURDER WITHOUT CRIME - 1950A top-flight noir from the U.K. Dennis Price is a down on his luck aristocrat forced to rent out rooms to maintain his former lifestyle. Derek Farr and Patricia Plunkett play the couple who have moved in upstairs. One night after a rather loud argument, the wife grabs a suitcase and storms out. Farr decides to hell with the wife and heads out to get blasted.Watching them both leave is Price who could not help but hear the dispute. Farr hits the pub and gets himself good and plastered. While at the pub he cuddles up to Joan Dowling. Dowling is a party girl who is always on the prowl for a good time. The pair leave together and head for Dowling's room. There they find the lack of alcohol a definite hindrance to the proceedings. Farr suggests a move to his place where there is a ready supply. A couple of belts later as the two are getting to the clinches, the phone rings. It is Plunkett. She wants to come home and make up. Farr agrees. Now he must get Dowling to leave, but she has other ideas. She does not intend to have her night spoiled and refuses to go.Farr offers her some cash which Dowling throws back in his face along with a slap. Farr responds in kind and down goes Dowling cracking her head on a table on the way. "The wife is coming home and I have a body in the front room!" Farr dumps Dowling into a clothes closet and heads off to intercept the wife. Downstairs the whole time of course has been Price listening to the fight upstairs. Price uses his passkey to enter and have a look around. A quick cut to the street and we see Plunkett arrive having missed Farr on the street. She enters the flat and quickly notices the glass with the lipstick.She begins her own look around just as Farr returns and confesses all. Plunkett decides to stick with her man and they discuss how to get rid of the body. Farr then remembers he had left his gloves at Dowling's place. Plunkett goes off to retrieve the gloves while Farr is to load the body into the car. Farr opens the closet and finds it empty. What is he to do. Farr decides the only way out is suicide. He mixes himself a drink and adds a lethal dose of poison. As he is mixing the deadly cocktail,l there is a knock at the door followed by Price entering. Price suggests that a little chat is in order. A slight increase in rent of say 50 fold a month will be needed to maintain his silence. Price hints he knows everything and a call to the police will put the couple in prison. Farr agrees to the terms. The phone rings, Farr answers. It is Plunkett calling from Dowling's flat. Dowling is not dead! She is there with a nasty bump on the head! She had been knocked unconscious and had revived while Price had been looking through the flat. Price is simply pulling a fast one! As Farr listens to his wife, he watches Price help himself to the sherry full of poison. Farr says nothing. He then tells Price to get stuffed. Farr watches Price leave knowing full well Price will be dead within 5 minutes. He could care less. (b/w)