Murder by Proxy
Murder by Proxy, released in the United States as Blackout, is a 1954 British film noir crime drama film directed by Terence Fisher. It stars Dane Clark and Belinda Lee. The screenplay concerns a man who is offered money to marry a woman. Plot summary. Drunk and down-and-out Casey Morrow (Clark) in London is approached by a young and beautiful heiress, Phyllis Brunner (Lee), offering him much money if he will marry her. He accepts, but then wakes up the next morning in some other woman's apartment with blood on his coat from the  murder of Brunner's father. Now he must unravel the mystery to clear his name, which leads him into a twisted labyrinth of encounters with various suspicious characters who seem to make his situation worse the more he learns. Production. The film was based on a novel "Murder by Proxy" which was published in 1952. It was the first movie in an eight picture contact between Hammer Films and Lippert Pictures. Dane Clark's casting was announced in September 1953. He stayed on in England to make "Five Days". Script supervisor Renee Glynne later recalled that Belinda Lee "was still  very inexperienced at that time and I had to watch her quite carefully. She'd cross her legs the wrong way or turn her head at the wrong moment or come out with the wrong line, so I'd have to correct her and try to help her out. Dane obviously fancied her and got very cross with my professional interference'. He got quite nasty and was actually pushing me away from her." Glynne says she had to take medication "in order to survive the rest of the film. After that I had to give all my instructions to him  through the director, Terry Fisher...after some shots he'd have to put his head under cold water because he was so enraged that I was even there. Eventually he realised how silly it all was and went down on his knees, tears streaming down his face, begging me to forgive him, But I still asked Tony Hinds to take me off the next film he was in." Reception. The "Monthly Film Bulletin"said "the treatment is sufficiently persuasive to bring a fair amount of excitement to the well tried material." "Variety" called it "a gabby, overlong, import from England that  has Dane Clark heading the cast as the only name known in the domestic market. Condition of the supporting feature mprket is such currently that the film will have no trouble getting bookings, even though it offers scant measure of entertain-ment... There’s nothing the players can do . with the plot as presented under the production helming of Michael Carreras, and Terence Fish-er's direction is deliberate to the extreme, even for a British offering." "Filmink" called it "an entirely decent, unpretentious film noir; the age gap between the leads is annoying, but Lee is an ideal femme -fatale-or-isn’t-she?"