A Kiss Before Dying

Year 13, Day 10 - 1/10/21 - Movie #3,710

BEFORE: Matt Dillon carries over from "Capone", and it only took me ten days to link from Korean film "Parasite" to something with Swedish actor Max von Sydow, to whom I've dedicated Movie Year 13.  That's some next-level linking, I think, and I only had to watch a few terrible movies with Tom Hardy to get there. This means I can start the Ingmar Bergman chain tomorrow, which was the whole point of starting 2021 where I started and getting here how I got here.  I jumped back 29 years, from 2020's "Capone" to today's film, released in 1991, and then tomorrow I'm jumping back another 34 years to "The Seventh Seal", released in 1957.  That's a lot of time-traveling for 2 days.  

THE PLOT: A determined student murders his pregnant secret girlfriend and moves on to her twin sister, who gradually becomes suspicious of her new lover.  

AFTER: I think I passed on this film several times, possibly because I confused it with "The Long Kiss Goodnight", which is this weird amnesia-based spy thriller from 1996, which I have seen.  Finally on like the 8th opportunity to record this, I realized it was not that film, and was something else entirely.  But this is also a weird mystery thriller, in its own way.  Most murder mysteries don't tell you who the murderer is right off the bat, for one thing.  Secondly, it's got both Max von Sydow AND a member of the Beastie Boys in it, which reminds me a bit of "The Boys from Brazil", which starred both Laurence Olivier and Steve Guttenberg. (It's true, look it up if you don't believe me...I still have a hard time with it, apparently.)

Jonathan Corliss is like a poor man's Patrick Bateman - this came out around the time that "American Psycho" was making the rounds as a novel, but years before it became a film.  The two stories are similar because they depict serial killers as sociopaths, which to me is a bit of a cop-out because they never really take the time to explain the WHY of the killing.  "Oh, well, he's a sociopath, that's why."  That's not enough for me.  I guess here we have the added advantage of Corliss marrying in to the Carlsson family (twice) so he can get his hands on their copper fortune.  But there are so many things about this plan that don't add up, and they all go toward making it unbelievable.  

Clearly, he's targeted a vulnerable family - for years he's saved newspaper clippings about the Carlsson's family misfortunes, tragic deaths of family members have occurred, leaving magnate Thor Carlsson with just two daughters, so Corliss sets out to marry one, but kills her, then targets the other, under another name.  OK, but WHY does he kill the first daughter, just because she got pregnant?  He's willing to be a husband, but not a father?  I mean, I guess it's possible that somebody out there in the world might kill their girlfriend for this reason, but there are other ways out of this situation.  That's just who this guy is, apparently, his quick and easy solution to everything is to commit murder.  But is any murder quick or easy?  They all seem like a lot of work - and with all the planning that he's been doing over the years, he can't plan a better solution to anything than to kill?  This is verging on a NITPICK POINT here.  

This is based on a 1956 movie with Robert Wagner and Joanne Woodward, maybe that's why some of the plot elements seem a little outdated - and now it's been 30 years since this film came out, so it's kind of double-outdated.  You probably couldn't even say "abortion" in a 1956 film, and to have that carry over to 1991, it's a little odd.  But the murder has to happen to drive the plot forward, I guess.  Then Corliss has to kill again once twin sister Ellen starts investigating Dorothy's murder, just to cover up his first murder, and then he has to kill some random guy while hitchhiking just so he can use that man's identity going forward.  THEN he has to fake his own death, again, it just seems like a lot of work.  

We never see how he meets Ellen after that and starts dating her - presumably he starts volunteering with her street-level charity outreach organization in order to prove that he's a decent guy, but again, that's more work.  Does Corliss even have a job?  This just leads to more questions.  Obviously he's targeted a rich family, and once he's married to one of the daughters, he'll be on easy street, but he's got to support himself somehow during the courting process, right?  Then you've got to factor in the costs of disposing of bodies, those large suitcases probably aren't cheap at all.  

Corliss takes over the identity of Jay Faraday, another one of his victims - this also feels like something that would have been easier to do in 1956, but more complicated in 1991. What did he do about changing his driver's license, passport and other documents since he looked nothing like the previous Jay Faraday?  How did he get a marriage license under the new name without proper ID?  And then there's another NITPICK POINT about forensics and police work, which is fairly non-existent here.  Possibly in 1956 you could type up a phony suicide note, kill somebody to make it look like suicide, and that might be enough.  But in 1991, wouldn't the Philadelphia police department have dusted the victim's computer keyboard for fingerprints?  Wouldn't the NYPD have checked that hotel room drain for traces of blood?  What about the envelope that the suicide note was mailed in, wouldn't that have fingerprints or DNA from saliva?  

After all that, after Corliss/Faraday gets married to Ellen, he considers taking a job in the Carlsson copper company, working directly under his father-in-law.  WHAT?  All that was just to get a JOB, which means more work, all day, every day?  He's part of a rich family now, and now even after all the killing, he's got to work harder than ever?  This is probably due to the strained relationship between Ellen and her father, plus her desire to do charitable work that probably pays her very little, but her father BOUGHT them an apartment, he's still going to provide for them, he should be on Easy Street now and not have to worry about his career.  Besides, if he'd wanted a job, he could have had that banking job way back at the beginning. No, he'd rather commit a few murders and change his identity.  Why?  Because he's a sociopath, of course.  

Eventually Corliss is undone by a chance encounter with an old co-worker, plus he kind of forgot that there are still college yearbooks out there that still have his photo in them?  Plus for some reason he saved something in his old childhood room that detailed his entire plan for success.  How stupid - and convenient for anybody looking into his backstory.  I'm sorry, but there's a lot here that just doesn't add up, and I think a lot of the problems came from remaking the film without updating certain elements from the 1950's for the 1990's.  

Also, I don't know if this is a writing problem, an acting problem, or a directing problem, but I just found it very hard to take most of the actors seriously here. There was usually something in their delivery that made them hard to believe - and it's a little hard to pinpoint.  Maybe this was the style back in 1991, I don't know.  It's kind of like the problem some people have with Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen in the "Star Wars" prequels - the dialogue is there, but there's just a lack of emotion behind it.  Some people blame George Lucas for this, saying that he knew how to work with robots and alien creatures, but not human actors.  This feels a little bit like that, where Matt Dillon and Sean Young are concerned.  (Don't worry, Max von Sydow, you were fine...)

Also starring Sean Young (last seen in "Blade Runner 2049"), Max von Sydow (last seen in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"), Diane Ladd (last seen in "28 Days"), James Russo (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in America"), Ben Browder, Martha Gehman (last seen in "Practical Magic"), Jim Fyfe, Lachele Carl, Joie Lee (last seen in "Summer of Sam"), Shane Rimmer (last seen in "Reds"), Adam Horovitz (last seen in "While We're Young", with cameos from Frederick Koehler (last seen in "The Circle"), Rory Cochrane (last seen in "White Boy Rick"), and archive footage of Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Bela Lugosi and James Stewart (last seen in "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room")

RATING: 4 out of 10 Carlsson Copper train cars