Dear Murderer (1948)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

A Masterpiece!

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The opening was one of the longest "prepare to die" speeches I have ever seen. Twenty minutes. Suave, cuckolded Eric Portman, visits then subdues his rival. Next, he tells how he learned of the man's bush brushing while he was overseas, and how he intends to kill him. Afterward, he spends another five minutes doing the deed and scattering the false trail. Then all the steam escapes, and the plot plods into police procedural. Turns out, hot, cheating wife (Greta Gynt) has a history of running around. She's already lined up her next man snack. Her husband needs roller skates to snuff everyone grazing her grass. Nice lighting, lot of Noir touches, though this is very much in the British mystery vein. Alright, at best. Dull and disappointing at worst.

It was going good but then it just gets stupid. Why would he tell his wife what he did?? Why would he keep trying to kill/frame her lovers instead of killing her!! And what a horrible ending!!! How could that ring possibly connect her to the murder? Couldn't the husband have found the ring somehow and dropped it before killing himself? Finding a ring like that would be a good reason to. But I have no clue how that at all incriminates her. Just rubbish, smh.I would also like to point out that I watch a ton of old movies and they almost always have a pretty girl playing the main role. But this lady who plays the wife is anything but attractive. Of course that could be b/c she plays the part of a monster so they didn't want a good looking lady but she didn't have to be that ugly. Now the young girl who plays the sister on the other hand is very pretty. :) In conclusion, this movie is an epic waste of time and "could" have been good had they stopped it at the 32 minute mark.

Eric Portman, Greta Gynt, Dennis Price, and Jack Warner star in "Dear Murderer," a 1947 film courtesy of Gainsborough Productions.Portman plays Lee Warren, an Englishman who has to be away for eight months in the U.S. setting up a New York office for his firm. His wife Vivien, who has cheated on him before, promises him she is over all that and will write every day. She keeps it up for a while and then the letters stop. Warren sees a photo of her in a Tattler magazine with one Richard Fenton (Price) and knows she's being unfaithful again.The film actually begins with Warren dropping in on Fenton and announcing that he's going to kill him, and that it will be the perfect crime. Complications ensue, not the least of which is that dear Vivien has another boyfriend as well. Fenton decides to kill two birds with one big stone.Really excellent suspense film with the beautiful Gynt looking incredible in some fabulous clothes, including the gown she wears when we first see her - it would cause a splash at today's Oscar ceremony. Jack Warner, who seems to be always playing a police detective, is here in his familiar role again.A perfect Sunday afternoon movie and if you're a lover of mystery and suspense as I am, you'll enjoy this.

A day or so ago I commented on the film (made only a few years after wards) that somehow resembles this one: FOOTSTEPS IN THE FOG. The basic story is of two ill-matched people who are in a marriage from hell. FOOTSTEPS was about a Victorian gentleman who murders his first wife, only to be blackmailed into marrying his socially ambitious maid, and how he starts conspiring to get rid of her as well. The problem with FOOTSTEPS was a lack of decently spirited direction. It lacked spark and pace, and gets boring. The cast tries, but it does not help enough. Not so with DEAR MURDERER. Unlike FOOTSTEPS (which was a Hollywood product - so it had to be burdened by larger budgets, and needed vervier directing), DEAR MURDERER is typical of the success story of British cinema - how with a concentration on minimal effect their films are sharper than bloated productions like FOOTSTEPS . The plot is also more devious.In FOOTSTEPS Jean Simmons' ambitions help destroy her and Steward Granger. But one can easily understand where she is coming from, as we tend to sympathize with people trying to pull themselves out of lower classes into upper classes. But this is dented because she is a blackmailer (though Granger's misdeed deserves such a punishment). Here, Eric Portman is married to a perpetual flirt (Greta Gynt) who despises him. She has been carrying on with Dennis Price, and Portman decides to kill Price. Yet, even in the process of doing just that, Portman gets to know his victim, and realizes that if he had not been sleeping with his wife Price could have been a good friend of his. So his guilt is increased when he discovers that Gynt and Price had broken up their relationship shortly before the murder.See: the story is still melodramatic, but the characterization is more interesting. So is the difference regarding Gynt's personae, as opposed to her opposite number in FOOTSTEPS. Simmons is socially ambitions, but the audience can accept that. Gynt is sluttish and also unlikeable. She is tired about the marriage to Portman (who does, misguidedly, love Gynt), and eventually wonders how she can end it - quickly. The film speeds to it's conclusion. If one dislikes Portman's Nazi in 49TH PARALLEL (his best remembered performance), his performance here certainly makes up for his totally unsympathetic villainy there. I have no problem recommending this film to the readers of these reviews. And of recommending it over FOOTSTEP IN THE FOG to them as well.