The visual style of this late-1950s crime thriller is typical of the period as it makes extensive use of outdoor locations, sets a great deal of its action in bright daylight and places the emphasis strongly on grittiness and realism. Less typical though, is its rather jaunty score and offbeat humour which play along with its observations on how closely the behaviour of a contract killer reflects the attitudes of the society from which he's emerged.After attending a job interview with Mr Moon (Michael Granger) and passing a test to prove that he has the necessary personal qualities, a young man named Claude (Vince Edwards) is hired as a contract killer. The well-educated, well-groomed and self-disciplined operative soon distinguishes himself by efficiently eliminating a couple of targets in Manhattan before stabbing Moon to death on the orders of the unseen Mr Brink, who's Moon's boss.Claude is an ambitious person whose desire to purchase a house adjacent to the Ohio River motivated him to abandon his secure, well-paid job so that he could earn the kind of money that would enable him to pay off his mortgage much sooner than would ever be possible if he'd remained in any more conventional form of employment. At $500 per hit, he's soon making the kind of progress he wants and is also given an opportunity to earn even more when he's sent to California to eliminate a key witness in a mob trial.In California he's met by Marc (Phillip Pine) and George (Herschel Bernardi) who also work for Brink. They're surprised by his relaxed attitude to his work and preference to go sightseeing before completing his contract. After giving himself sufficient time to be sure that his handlers aren't being followed, the ultra-confident and highly-professional hit-man checks out the property in which his target lives. He immediately recognises that this job will be challenging when he sees that the house is heavily guarded by police officers but things get even worse when he realises that the witness is a woman.He thinks that women present a special problem because they're not dependable and believes that he should be paid double his agreed fee for killing her. Unfortunately, however, he's left with no alternative but to proceed when he realises that, if he demands more money or doesn't fulfil his contract, he too will be guaranteed to be killed. Some shocking and dramatic developments then follow as Claude attempts to complete his mission whilst also becoming progressively more and more unstable.This movie's plot unfolds in a style that's lean, fast-moving and very direct. It's obviously a very low budget offering and does a great job of being entertaining and intriguing whilst also making some interesting points along the way. With consistently good performances from its talented cast and Vince Edwards outstanding as the cold-blooded hit-man who has a problem with his attitude to women, "Murder By Contract" is riveting to watch and definitely one that's not to be missed..

While watching this I was trying to imagine what TV crime series might have been popular in 1958, because that's basically what this is -- a lesser episode of "M Squad" or "Highway Patrol" or something.Getting the story, such as it is, out of the way -- Ben Casey, I mean Vince Edwards, appears in a hoodlum's apartment and asks for a job as a contract killer. Edwards is really cool. "Why do you keep calling me 'sir'?", asks the hoodlum. "Because I respect you." Later, after Edwards proves himself by offing a couple of people, that respect doesn't stop him from knifing to death the guy who hired him, on the orders of someone higher up.Edwards is so good at what he does that Mr. Big sends him out to Los Angeles to take out the ex wife of a crime figure before the ex can squeal on him. Edwards is met by two men who are to squire him around and make sure he gets the job done -- Herschel Bernardi and Phillip Pine.But the contract killer is in no hurry. He's entirely sure of himself. He shows no emotion at any time except for an occasional sullen outburst against a sloppy waiter. He fishes and sees the sights, all the while "planning," though what he is planning is anybody's guess since he doesn't know who or where the target is.We've seen these professional, emotionless hired killers before. Allan Ladd in "This Gun For Hire." Lee Marvin in "The Killers." The kinds of self-possessed guys who might once have admitted to themselves that they'd been wrong -- but just to see wha6t it felt like. They never make a mistake until the end, when they must be killed.Edwards' character, though, is inconsistent. When he finds out (finally!) that the target is a woman he actually shows signs of distress. Because he doesn't want to kill a woman? No. It's because they're unpredictable, so for this job he demands double his fee. But at the climax, something prevents him from strangling the spiteful ex wife when he has the chance. Does his conscience REALLY stop him? Was he lying when he gave his earlier reason? There are some things man was never meant to know.He's inconsistent, too, in that for all his methodical "planning" and self confidence, he bungles the job -- twice. The first time he explodes a TV set in her living room but she escapes unharmed. How did he ever manage to plant an explosive device in a house surrounded by dozens of armed cops and FBI men? There are some things man etc.I don't want to go on too long about this because its not worth much attention, but let me mention one scene as emblematic of the film's failure of imagination and execution.Edwards visits the ex's ex maid to find out the target's daily habits. The elderly and sloppy maid is drunk. Now, this is a commonly encountered situation. Investigator has to pry information out of a wary alcoholic informant. See, oh, "Murder My Sweet," "Farewell My Lovely," "Malice", and "Coogan's Bluff" offhand. This kind of encounter gives the writer, the director, and the performers a chance to show some wit and class in delineating character. Not here. The scene is lighted with a high key and photographed flatly as on an old black-and-white television screen. The actress overacts. Edwards doesn't act at all.By the end, I didn't care who killed whom. I didn't care if the ex wife got it in the neck or not. It isn't simply that she was abrasive, nasty to everyone around her. In a similar arrangement, Marie Windsor mistreated everyone in "The Narrow Margin," yet I cared about her. It's that here the casting, like the acting, is almost inhuman. The only character I thought had more depth than a Petri plate was the whore that Edwards has sent up to his room.The music! I can't NOT mention the music. A lone guitar with an obstinate ostinato. It's cheaper to have one instrument even if it plays a simple tune that is ripped off from "The Third Man" and even if the tune, repeated repeatedly, is enough to prompt you to clean your ears with carbolic acid afterward.There are a few outdoor scenes, often with rear projection. Almost everything takes place on indoor sets with uninspired dressings. Nothing speaks of "place." Well -- Los Angeles can be like that, but even so, this film goes too far.That guitar! That TUNE! I can't get it out of my head! The voices are telling me to turn it off, but how??? Oh, sure, easy for THEM to say! Edwards might be able to do it -- the same way he inserted the explosives into the TV set in that fortress of a house. But we mere humans?

Occasionally I feel compelled to write about something, perhaps to expound a thought. The thought--this guy, Edwards, was meant to be Claude, much like Ladd was meant to be Raven in This Gun for Hire. So what happened? These talents move on from these little gems and settle for the lesser compelling stuff. One wonders what could have been.It takes a certain something in a person to REALLY portray a cold blooded killer. The key is to convince the viewer that this person really could do this. Robert Blake's Perry Smith (In Cold Blood, 1967) I recall did it. Dinero of course did it, many times. Maybe there needs to be bit of off-centeredness in personality to be able to pull it off, to shock maybe.Murder by Contract is one of those little movies I wish that I could go back in time and redirect it too, to focus on near total exploitation of this crazy man, Claude. Vince Edwards is really quite good in this part. One other thing I would do too--completely re-engineer the Phillip Pine part. I thought his character's mentality and mouth greatly undermined the tone of the film, unless you're into continuous in-your-face stupidity.It is interesting when one gets the chance to drop in on an obscure file Murder by Contract. Is like--where has that thing been? Fortunately there are many that fit the category, i.e. little known, little budget, but well-acted and able to provoke. Keeps one searching the archives for more and more.

(Some Spoilers) Dead serious in the job that he does Claude, Vince Edwards, is the absolute epitome of a gun for hire, or hit-man. Cold calculating and most of all careful Claude knows just how to deal not only with his victims but those behind the scenes who hire him to rub them out. We get to see just how disciplined Claude is in the first fifteen minutes of the movie when after having an interview with his soon to be boss Mr. Moon in how we see him going about in doing a number of "jobs" for him.Being told to stay in his hotel room for a call, and he's employment with Mr Moon will be terminated if he didn't answer, Claude never leaves the room for two weeks! Exorcising his very fit and well-developed frame while waiting, until Mr. Moon finally calls him. Giving a hit-job to do for the secretive Mr. Moon Claude does it with style by posing as a barber and slitting the throat of his victim. The next "job" that Claude does for Mr. Moon is at the hospital again posing as a doctor, a precursor to Edwards role as TV Doc Ben Casey, and suffocating his next victim, who's in intensive care by cutting off his oxygen. Finished and payed off by Mr. Moon for a job, or job's, well done Claude pays him an unexpected visit doing a hit-job on him running his startled ex-employer through with a switchblade ; Claude is now working for Mr. Moon's boss Mr.Brink who for reasons that only he knows had Mr. Moon terminated.Being paid $5,000.00, ten time his usual fee, Claude is given an all-expense paid vacation and two week stay in L.A to hit a US government witness who's to testify against his now boss Mr. Brink. Being put under the careful watch of his two mob controllers Marc & George when he arrived in the "City of Angels" Claude is soon to realize the devil in the details in his new job. The person Claude is to hit Billie Williams isn't his normal kind of victim. She's a woman who's not only Mr. Brinks ex-gun moll but who's also turning evidence against him.At first just sightseeing and going swimming and deep sea fish diving Clude waste almost all his alloted time in plotting the hit he was assigned to do for Brink. George & Marc get really ticked off at the careless and paranoid way Claude is acting after telling him who the person that he's assigned to knock off is to be. It's then where he for the first time in the film Claude actually shows some feeling for one of his victims.It's not that Billie is just a woman but that she's protected by dozens of police and federal agents. That makes the hit he's paid to do on her so difficult for Claude. After two aborted and messed up attempts on Billie's life, one which results in the death of an undercover police woman, Claude starts to feel that this job is jinxed and wan't out. Only to have himself then set up to be hit by his now angry and frustrated boss Mr. Brink. Having a far easier time in dispatching both his controllers George & Marc, who were secretly contracted by Mr. Brink to knock him off, Claude goes after and sets his gun-sight on Billie for what's now become for him personal not professional reasons. Being the perfectionist that he is Claude is now more then ever determined to finish the job that he was originally contracted to do $5,000.00 or no $5,000.00.One of the best movie about the inner workings and thoughts of a professional hit-man and how he operates in the world of crime. Never leaving any paper trail and always respecting, Claude tries not to use a gun on his job because their illegal, the law until he corners and rubs out his victim. Vince Edwards' cold-blooded portrayal of professional hit-man Calude is one of the best and at the same time most underrated performances of his career. Edwards presses all the right bottoms during the 81 minutes that he's in the movie where he goes form an almost zombie-like and mindless killer to a swathing and emotionally unstable kook. Who in the end when he finally has Billie right where he wants her to be, alone and in the house with him,he completely blows it and ends up with himself being blown away in return.