What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

A wife kills her husband, while she carries on an affair with his best friend who also happens to be a defense attorney. Inexpensive little programmer that would work just as well as a movie made for TV. Still it has a good tight script, with a few twists, and two fine actors. It's Raymond Burr a year before Perry Mason and I expect his courtroom scenes here did a lot to win him the lead in Mason. He carries them off with real authority. Then there's Lansbury as the calculating ice queen, and I stopped counting her smiles after one. She does make a convincing spider woman, however.There's little action, while the courtroom scene takes up a lot of time. Still the plot line is an interesting one of intrigue and misdirection. So there are compensations to the talky format. One does have to wonder, however, about attorney Carlson's (Burr) iron sense of retribution. It appears a key plot contrivance, but an interesting one given the circumstances of his guilt. Should mention, at the same time, the presence of the great John Dehner in the key supporting role of county DA. His is a familiar face from that time, and I don't think he ever turned in a second-rate performance, no matter the role. Anyway, it's highly obscure little movie, but not without compensations.

Opening with attorney Craig Carlson buying a gun before settling down to leave a message for the police regarding a murder – his own impending murder, the film offers much in the way of plotting. We flashback to when Carlson confesses to his old friend that not only is his friend's wife leaving him, but that she is leaving to be with him and that he is representing her in the divorce. His friend takes it much better than expected but soon a moment of violence sees all the characters changed or shown in a new light, with the stakes high.I watched this film out of curiosity because not only it is now in the public domain but it also features two very famous names in the lead roles. The opening of the film is odd because it has no sound other than the music, which is an odd effect that doesn't help the atmosphere; likewise the visuals are too dark and not the layered sort of shadowing I'm used to with films from the period that do this sort of darkness well. The plot jumps to the crux of the matter very quickly and as a result it lacks build and development in the characters, robbing the film of audience involvement. What this leaves is the very stiff plotting which folds out reasonably well with interesting turns but nothing too thrilling or exciting. It isn't helped as an idea by just how very "television" the whole thing feels – it is stagey and the delivery of it all is stiff and lacks a spark that it badly needed.The acting is equally stiff and although this isn't too surprising, it is still disappointing. Burr is in the sort of stiff lawyer mode that would later work in Perry Mason but here it is too stiff and doesn't fit the material, I would have liked a bit of emotion in his delivery, particularly towards the back end of the film. By contrast Lansbury is a bit too hammy and melodramatic in her role, she is supposed to be a real femme fatale but she doesn't convince in that role at any point. The supporting players all go the same way – very stiff and lacking in delivery.Please Murder Me offers an interesting plot but it never really delivers it. The whole film lacks spark and life, which is partly due to the very stiff delivery across the board – cinematography is televisual at best, the direction is basic and the performances are just far too unnatural and lacking emotion. A shame because I was looking forward to seeing the two stars in an unusual vehicle, but this isn't much cop.

This is a small film, in that the stars weren't big-name stars of the day. PLEASE MURDER ME stars Raymond Burr (just before he made it big as Perry Mason), Angela Lansbury and Dick Foran--all capable actors, though hardly starring actors of the day. Despite this lack of star power and an apparent small budget, it's not a bad film--especially when there is a twist and the plot quickly changes about midway through the movie.The film begins as Burr is sitting in his office in the darkness--dictating to a tape recorder that he's about to be murdered. Both the lighting and the idea of a man talking about his impending demise are very much in keeping with a Film Noir piece--as is the direction the film goes in the second half. As for the first half, it starts off with Burr telling his best friend that he has fallen for this friend's wife and wants to marry her! Oddly, instead of punching Burr in the face, the guy says he'll get back with Burr in a few days. However, after a few days, his wife shoots him--claiming he was trying to kill her. Did she do this in self-defense and what will her lawyer (Burr) do? While some of this is a bit predictable, it certainly all isn't and makes for a nifty little film. It's not 100% believable, but given that it's so entertaining, why worry about this? If you are interested in seeing it, it's in the public domain and can be downloaded for free from the IMDb site.By the way, look for Denver Pyle in a small role as a detective testifying in court. It's interesting because Pyle lacks his usual heavy Southern accent and he seems quite at home playing a man living in the big city.

Raymond Burr stars as an attorney caught up in the murder of his best friend (Dick Foran) thanks to his affection for his friend's wife (Angela Lansbury). This was a full year before he started doing Perry Mason, so the movie might be of particular interest to his fans if it was the inspiration for his casting.There isn't all that much else here that's interesting though. Lansbury is always good, but her character here is very one dimensional and the motives for her crime in the mystery are totally obvious. There's an interesting performance by Lamont Johnson as a painter who's also in love with the "femme fatale", but the Burr character is pretty straightforward. It's frankly bizarre to see an actor like Burr doing these romantic scenes with Lansbury, and his halting delivery does not match his character here very well as it does in most films I've seen him in. There's no mystery at all really, and the whole suspense is supposed to be around the title of the film and the way that Burr's character is setting up the Lansbury character to implicate herself (double jeopardy prevents her being tried again for the original murder, presumably). He does so with a very large tape recorder which she doesn't notice when she comes into the room I guess.A few perhaps unintentionally fun moments and basically the rest of the thing could have been done for TV.