Guest Blogging - Sioux Lady

Below is a piece written by Sioux Lady. Anyone who wants to "guest blog" on here - just let me know. Being the control freak that I am, I will OF COURSE vet the piece first, but what the heck - it is MY blog! Enjoy.

A PERFECT DIAL “M” FOR MURDER

The similarities and differences between Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 “Dial M for Murder” and Andrew Davis’s 1998 remake “A Perfect Murder” tell us more about cultural changes that have occurred in the last 44 years than they do about the movie-making skills of either.

They movies have the same plot line. A money-desperate husband plots the murder of his beautiful, elegant, heiress wife who he knows has taken a lover and will leave him. He hires/blackmails someone else to do the “wet work.” He leaves her apartment key in a hidden place and shows the killer how that will guarantee his easy access. The killer is to make the killing look like a robbery gone wrong. The husband arranges to be surrounded by others miles from home while the deed is being done, but calls home at just the right time to place his wife in the “kill zone.” The husband hears the murder attempt taking place over the open line. However, the wife kills the killer. The husband makes a key blunder which eventually proves he is guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.

Some plot differences: Hitchcock’s movie is set in London; Davis’s in New York. In “Dial M,” the hired killer is an old Oxford schoolmate of the husband who is a complete stranger to the wife. He was a petty thief at school and, using an alias, has become much worse since – mostly bilking lonely women. In “Perfect,” the hired killer, using an alias, is the wife’s lover. He was a juvenile delinquent and has served time in prison as an adult where he developed an innate artistic talent. He, too, has spent his time since bilking lonely widows and is currently wanted for theft of bearer bonds. The wife does not know of his past and is helping to promote his artistic talent. In both cases, the husband uses the threat of exposure and the payment of a lot of money to get the killer to do the deed.

In “Dial M,” the husband finds a letter from the lover to the wife and mails her anonymous blackmail threats. The wife shares these letters with her lover. In “Perfect,” the husband sets detectives on the lover to learn of his past and on his wife to get pictures of her liaisons. The husband also writes a phony blackmail letter, but doesn’t send it. Both husbands contrive to have the killers pick up dropped envelops containing the love letter in “Dial M” and the blackmail letter and pictures in “Perfect” to place their fingerprints thereupon and use this as part of the threat. In both movies, the husband has the killer in the apartment in order to demonstrate how the murder is to be done. In “Perfect,” however, this requires the husband and lover/killer to meet twice; once when the proposition/threat is made at the lover/killer’s apartment and, again, at the husband’s apartment. This is important to the plot because it gives the lover/killer an opportunity to tape record the husband’s killing directions.

The most important plot difference between the two movies is that, in “Dial M,” the wife, after killing the killer, picks up the phone and finds her husband on the line. In a state of shock, she he tells him what happened. He tells her not to touch anything or call the police and rushes home. After sending her to lie down in the bedroom, he re-arranges the evidence to incriminate her. He places the love letter in the dead killer’s pocket, takes the apartment key out of the killer’s pocket and places it back in his wife’s purse, burns in the fireplace the scarf the killer had tried to use to strangle the wife and replaces it with her stockings to make it look like she planted them there after using them to make “strangle” marks on her neck. He is successful in all of this and she is tried, convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a blackmailer.

In “Perfect,” the husband arrives home before the police. He goes first to “console” his blood-soaked wife and finds the blood trail back to the kitchen where the killer lies dead with a ski-mask on. He only has time to take her apartment key out of the dead man’s pocket and put it back on her key ring and make scratches on the back door faking a forced entry before the police arrive. Imagine his surprise when the ski-mask is removed and the dead man is not the lover, but a complete stranger the lover hired to do the “wet work.”

The cultural differences between the two movies are immense. First, as to violence. In “Dial M,” while we see the killer try to strangle the wife and her use a scissors to stab him in the back – not one drop of blood is shown. The killer falls backwards on to the scissors which drives it in deep enough to kill him. The place where the killer fell is covered by an area rug in later scenes. That is all the violence there is in the whole movie. In “Perfect,” we see the killer try to murder the wife and her use a handy meat thermometer to stab him in the throat. Blood squirts. There is blood smeared everywhere and one great pool of it. This movie has two more violent scenes.

Language. There is not a “hell” or a “damn” in the whole of “Dial M.” “Perfect” is littered with the “f” word among others.

Sex. In “Dial M,” the husband and wife exchange hello and goodbye spousal kisses. The lover barely touches the wife and the only way we know of any sex between them is because the husband tells the killer he followed them once to the lover’s apartment where they were making spaghetti together. Unless “making spaghetti” was some fifties euphemism for going at it hot and heavy, that is as much “sex” as there is. In “Perfect,” torrid bed scenes and passionate embraces between the wife and lover leave nothing to the imagination – darn it!

The most interesting cultural difference, however, is the difference between the role of the men and women in the two movies particularly that of the two detectives and the two leading ladies. (The role of the lover in “Dial M” is not important. He believes his lover to be innocent and, being a writer of mystery novels, realizes what must have happened, but he cannot prove it.) In “Dial M,” the Scotland Yard detective is the hero of the story. Learning of some odd behavior on the part of the husband after the wife’s conviction, he realizes that something “smells.” With further investigation, he figures out what really happened, entraps the husband, saves the hapless, dazed and confused wife from the gallows and delivers her into the arms of her lover.

In “Perfect,” while the detective believes there is something wrong with the scenario that the killer was robbing the apartment when surprised by the wife who he then tries to kill, he has not the least idea of what really happened. It is the wife who figures it out. She is not just a housewife like the fifties “Dial M” wife, but a high-powered – at least tri-lingual – career woman who works as an assistant to a United Nations ambassador. After the attack she had been as hapless, dazed and confused as the “Dial M” wife, but after a time she gets over it, attempts to contact her lover, gets on with her plan to leave her husband and moves out. She is suspicious that he might have been behind the attack and uses her high-level contacts to have his finances investigated. She learns that he is in deep financial trouble. When she confronts her husband, he shows her proof of her lover’s past and his “proof” of her lover’s attempt at blackmail. She accepts it all as factual, apologizes to him and moves back in. The husband kills the lover who attempts to blackmail him with the recording he had made. The lover – who did really love the wife – had sent her a copy of the recording, but the husband intercepts it and puts it in a safe in the apartment.

“Perfect” does not quite make clear what re-arouses the wife’s suspicions, but, becoming so, she figures out the combination to the safe, finds the recording, and locates the key piece of evidence. Instead of calling the police, she taunts the husband into trying to kill her. Once he strikes her and she has proof of his second attempt, she pulls a gun and shoots him dead in self-defense. When the detective arrives he listens to the recording and gazes at the wife in awe. I did, too!

How did “Dial M” end? The detective first clears the wife using the key piece of evidence; then uses it to entrap the husband. The four main characters are now all in the apartment together. The husband makes a half-hearted attempt to flee, but when he finds the exits guarded, he goes to the bar to pour himself a drink. He cordially asks his wife and lover if they would like one. They graciously accept. The camera pans to the detective who takes a comb from his pocket to smooth his “veddy” English moustache as he smiles in smug self-satisfaction. How civilized!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out which of the movies I prefer.