Kill Her Gently

Kill Her Gently is a sub Hitchcockian British B thriller starring American Marc Lawrence who had escaped to Europe after being blacklisted for his political views in the 1950s.

Two convicts break out of prison. Connors is an American and Svenson is a Swede. While on the run they are picked up by a motorist, Martin who realises who they are but helps them pass a police road block. Martin makes the a proposition to the fugitive. He will help them leave the country if in return they will kill his wife.

It looks like Martin is more deranged than the convicts who has suffered a mental breakdown for which his wife had him sectioned and who also thinks she might be having an affair.

Most of the film is set in the couple's home as Martin initially comes across as a victim with his wife. However the convicts become reluctant carrying out his task especially Svenson.

This is a tight, short thriller but with a very rushed ending. Marc Lawrence impresses as a tough guy with a looming conscious. Griffith Jones is also memorable as the conniving, cunning and desperate husband who wants to punish his wife for having him incarcerated.

In 1957's Kill Her Gently, Connors (Marc Lawrence) and Svenson (George Mikell), an American and a Swede, escape from prison and are picked up by a man, Jeff Martin (Griffith Jones) on his way home. He knows who they are and tells the police blockade that they are two friends.

The escapees don't quite understand why he's being so nice, until he offers them 1000 pounds to kill his wife. In exchange, he offers to get them out of the country that night.

The men put on an act of treating both Jeff and wife Kay (Maureen Connell) as hostages.

Turns out that the true looney-tunes in this group is Jeff. Kay cheated on him with the doctor who had him committed. Well, he doesn't seem to have fully recovered.

Kay is the one with the money, but when the monthly deposit hasn't yet arrived, tensions grow, and Jeff needs to sell his car. He's arranged for them to leave by evening, but they're not going anywhere without the money.

Eventually bodies start piling up in this violent and misogynistic film. Director Charles Saunders keeps the tension going. The American and British cast was for a wider distribution of the film. Marc Lawrence seems to be the biggest name, living in Europe due to being blacklisted.

I guess the only reason this movie is not a well-beloved classic is that it was not made in Hollywood, is filmed in black-and-white, came from a minor studio and is full of unknowns. I also don't understand why so many people who watched its TCM debut rated it so low. It is definitely the best movie I saw during their entire "detectives" month.

The film starts out with Connors, an American, and Svenson, a Swede, escaping from prison. They are picked up hitchhiking by Jeff Martin. They become suspicious, though, when Martin gets them through a police roadblock, covering for them by claiming they are some friends of his that he has brought back from London to the rural area where the story transpires.

It turns out Martin has plans for them. He makes a bargain with them to help them flee the country if they will assist him in his scheme. Otherwise, he will turn them in. They have little choice, and agree to go along with his plan before they even know what it is.

But everything goes wrong with Martin's plan from the start. Bad breaks follow unfortunate coincidences in one unexpected plot twist after another, starting from the moment they get back to Martin's house and running all the way down to the penultimate scene.

Eventually it comes out that Martin has a past, and when the escaped cons discover it, this creates another rift in the deteriorating trio.

Both of the "bad guys" are really not so bad. Svenson especially is quite human, a rather sympathetic character. Of course, in spite of their increasing lack of enthusiasm for Martin's plan, the two of them have lived by the sword, and so are liable for the consequences. But each of them manages to achieve a small measure of redemption.

Nothing is wasted in this movie. The plot unfolds with mounting tension at a rapid pace. Every moment in this rather short film is calculated, crafted, a necessary piece in the tension that is developed by a skillful combination of plot and direction. Hitchcock rarely did it better, and often did it worse.

Even the final scene keeps in character with the movie, and does not fall into the mawkishness which would have been so easy, but rather ends up on a rather dark and somewhat ambiguous note.

The building tension in this movie achieves what few movies ever have been able to do to me ("Lady In A Cage," "Dial M For Murder" and "Midnight Lace" spring to mind), keeping me riveted to the screen, and almost uncomfortable, squirming in my chair as I wait for the inevitable, which, in the greatest Hitchockian manner, does not come, but is whipped away by a surprising plot twist.

Excellent suspense! Masterfully executed!

"Kill her gently" is another brilliant example of B toughness in british 1950's cinema. And I do not know any other movie by the director Charles Saunders who directs energically this psycho hostage story in the main setting of a house. Marc Lawrence is a powerful threatening badman, Griffith Jones is the husband taken in hostage with his beautiful wife Maureen Connell threatened by Marc Lawrence but always resisting (what a performance), and Marianne Brauns is another Marc Lawrence's victim. And virtuoso shootings in the main violent scenes. Don't grip on the few mistakes in the story.

Thus was it described by Chibnall & McFarlane in 'The British 'B' Film' in 2009. The evidently tiny budget actually enhances this raw little hostage drama which begins like Edgar Ulmer's 'Detour' (1945) with Griffith Jones giving a lift to two desperadoes. Not surprisingly the film was released only after delays and cuts.

One of the hitch-hikers is played by one of Hollywood's meanest-looking heavies ever, the ferrity-faced Marc Lawrence; who back in America himself later directed the similar 'Nightmare in the Sun'.