A BLUEPRINT FOR MURDER: tight and teasing and very alluring

A BLUEPRINT FOR MURDER is a deceptively tight and genuinely gripping thriller which will keep you guessing almost until the very last moment.

It's deceptive because the opening few scenes are less than promising. Most are set in large, over-lit, badly mic-ed rooms where the sound booms and the scenery swamps the characters. It exudes the look and feel of a cheaply made B-movie fronted by stars whose best days are most definitely behind them.
But as the story unfolds it also starts to tighten, the aimless chit chat takes on a new significance and the cast begin to dominate their surroundings.
By the film's mid point there's a definite whiff of film noir in the air.
And by the end I absolutely could not wait a moment longer to discover if Joseph Cotten's suspicions about his beautiful sister-in-law were correct or he'd completely lost his marbles.
It's difficult to figure out whether the transformation was an intentional part of the story's structure, or that it simply took writer-director Andrew L.Stone time to find his rhythm but frankly I'm not too bothered, Because the end result was total entertainment.
Cotten plays staid middle-aged oil industry executive Whitney Cameron who turns detective when he starts to suspect that the stepmother (Jean Peters) to his late brother's two young children has poisoned one of them and is planning the same fate for the other in order to get her hands on their father's fortune. Complicating matters is Cameron's growing attraction to said stepmom. A BLUEPRINT FOR MURDER was my first introduction to the exceptionally beautiful and alluring Miss Peters, and I can totally understand Cameron's dilemma. She has the kind of looks that would make the most street-hardened detective doubt his professional judgment.

Peters plays it right down the middle giving us no real clues to support or undermine Cameron's suspicions. She keeps her cool under pressure and smothers the surviving step-child with so much love that it's difficult to believe she could ever mean him harm. So what are we to believe - the evidence of our own eyes or the the circumstantial case her brother-in-law is building against her? And what is Cameron trying to hide?
All of this drama is packed into a scant 77 minute running time yet it never feels rushed. Director Stone makes the time to allow the tension to build incrementally, while also keeping the story moving fast enough to gloss over any implausibilities (like the hospital whose pharmacy closes at 6pm forcing its doctors to send prescriptions out to be filled at nearby drugstores when they need lifesaving medication after hours).
A BLUEPRINT FOR MURDER is undeniably a B-movie but it's an excellent example of the genre and considerably more exciting than many A-movies with twice the budget and stars in their prime to spend it on.