The string music that plays throughout the film is reminiscent of The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949), and so are the tunnel scenes. But Murder by Contract has a much lighter tone, with a lot of daylight, no Dutch angles, and a contract killer, Claude (Vince Edwards), who doesn’t like guns and prefers going to the beach than doing his job. The latter was filmed in nine days, its low budget being one of its biggest charms, other than Edwards charming performance.
Irving Lerner’s quirky, jazzy Murder by Contract is a stylized Beat Generation noir featuring a cool-headed contract killer named Claude, played by a young and hunky Vince Edwards (who would later find fame as television’s Dr. Ben Casey). Claude’s no run-of-the-mill hitman: he carries no gun, waxes philosophical, and prides himself on having strict moral principles. He’s supremely confident (“Be a good boy and dry my back,” he tells one of his colleagues), but his efforts are frustrated when he’s hired to eliminate a key witness in a high-profile trial, a woman hiding out in her California house guarded by cops around the clock. Despite several creative attempts, Claude struggles for a successful hit, which forces him to up the ante. Screenwriter Ben Simcoe imbues Claude’s moral ambiguity with an accidental comedic streak, a tone that quite possibly influenced Quentin Tarantino decades later.
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