A Kiss Before Dying

Based on the novel by bestselling author Ira Levin, who also penned The Boys from Brazil, The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby, Gerd Oswald’s A Kiss Before Dying stars Robert Wagner as handsome psychopath and homme fatale Bud Corliss, a social-climbing undergraduate who murders his way into a wealthy family. In only her second film role, Joanne Woodward plays the first sister, Dorothy Kingship, Bud’s naive and devoted girlfriend at college who becomes pregnant and therefore must be eliminated, and Virginia Leith plays the second sister, the shrewd and skeptical Ellen Kingship, who refuses to believe Dorothy killed herself and investigates her death with the assistance of Gordon Grant (Jeffrey Hunter), one of Dorothy’s former tutors. A couple of noir legends play parental roles: Mary Astor as Bud’s somewhat kooky, ignorant mother from the wrong side of the tracks, and George Macready as the grieving, distrustful Mr. Kingship. Remade in 1991, the film’s somewhat muted color palette and understated performances give it an occasionally unreal quality, which further intensifies the suspense sequences, most impressively the lead-up to Dorothy’s big fall.