Please Murder Me (1956)
A defense attorney who once won an acquittal for the woman he loves engineers an elaborate scheme to expose her guilt, manipulating her into a confession that leaves him shot and her caught by her own recorded words.
Please Murder Me was the final film directed by Peter Godfrey, shot quickly and cheaply for the independent Distributors Corporation of America as the Poverty Row era wound down; its chief interest today is Angela Lansbury, nearly three decades before Murder, She Wrote, playing the scheming femme fatale opposite Raymond Burr not long before he traded villain roles for Perry Mason’s courtroom.
Background
Please Murder Me was the final film directed by Peter Godfrey, released March 1, 1956, with a screenplay by Donald Hyde and Al C. Ward and a running time of 78 minutes. Raymond Burr plays defense attorney Craig Carlson, who wins an acquittal for Myra Leeds (Angela Lansbury), accused of murdering her husband, only to fall in love with her along the way. After the verdict, Carlson learns Myra was guilty all along and had manipulated him into winning her freedom so she could inherit her husband’s estate.
What to watch for
Unable to have her retried for the same crime, Carlson instead engineers an elaborate scheme to record a confession from Myra himself, a plan that costs him his own life even as it exposes hers. The film’s chief interest for modern viewers is its casting: Lansbury plays the scheming femme fatale nearly three decades before she became television’s Jessica Fletcher, while Burr, soon to trade villain and heavy roles for Perry Mason’s courtroom, appears here as the deceived lawyer rather than the detective or prosecutor type he later became known for playing.
