KILL ME TOMORROW

 

KILL ME TOMORROW (1957) is the last film Terence Fisher directed before THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. It is a low-budget British black & white crime story, much in the same vein as the B pictures Fisher made for Hammer Films in the early 1950s. KILL ME TOMORROW attempts to be a gritty noir thriller, but it doesn't quite succeed due to the contrived script. 

Hollywood character actor Pat O'Brien plays Bart Crosbie, an American reporter working for a London newspaper. Things aren't going too well for Crosbie--his wife was killed in an auto accident in which he was the driver, and his irresponsible ways are affecting his job. Crosbie gets fired, then finds out that his son needs an expensive operation to save his life. Crosbie goes to the home of his boss at the newspaper for help, but finds he has just been murdered by a diamond smuggler's (George Coulouris) goon. To make matters worse, the boss' niece (Lois Maxwell) happens to walk in, and sees Crosbie standing over the body while holding the gun used in the killing. Bart runs out, and hits upon an idea. He will blackmail the smuggler into giving him the money for his child's operation, by agreeing to take the rap for the murder. Needless to say, this plan doesn't work the way Crosbie thought it would. 

KILL ME TOMORROW was made by Delta Films, a short-lived company run by producer Francis Searle and Terence Fisher. It would be easy, though, to mistake it as an early 1950s Hammer, since it shares many of the same attributes of those films--a past-his-prime American actor as the leading man, a story that involves crime, and a running time of about 80 minutes. KILL ME TOMORROW does have a fair amount of location shooting that gives it some vitality. 

What this movie really needed was a younger and more energetic leading man. Pat O'Brien (who was in his late fifties when he made this film) is pudgy and tired-looking, and there doesn't seem to be any reason why the attractive and classy Lois Maxwell would go out of her way to help him. Ironically, KILL ME TOMORROW would have been more suited for O'Brien if it had been made when the actor was working for Warner Bors. in the mid-1930s (Joan Blondell could have played Lois Maxwell's role). At one point O'Brien beats up three bad guys in a fistfight, and not only it is hard to believe, the sequence is clumsily handled. The sub-plot concerning O'Brien's son doesn't help--the kid is portrayed in such an overly-cute manner, he becomes annoying. 

Lois Maxwell and Pat O'Brien in KILL ME TOMORROW

Maxwell (best known as Miss Moneypenny in the classic Bond films) does the best she can with a under-written role. George Coulouris (CITIZEN KANE) is a slimy, though not very smart, villain, with future spaghetti western veteran Al Mulock as one of his henchmen. Robert Brown, who would much later play M alongside Maxwell in a few Bond movies, is one of Crosbie's newspaper co-workers, and Richard Pasco, in his very first big-screen role, plays the doctor taking care of O'Brien's son. Both Brown and Pasco would later appear in a number of Hammer films. 

KILL ME TOMORROW has a special "guest star"--rock and roll singer Tommy Steele, who was very popular in England at the time. Steele shows up twice, at a coffee bar run by George Coulouris' character, singing the same song. He doesn't have much screen time, and he doesn't even get any dialogue--I'm pretty sure that any fans of the singer who went and saw this film when it came out were rather disappointed. 

According to Tony Dalton in his biography of Terence Fisher, the director got along very well with Pat O'Brien (one can imagine that the two spent plenty of time together at various pubs). Fisher probably got more enjoyment being with O'Brien than he did making this film. KILL ME TOMORROW isn't bad, but the cast and the director are the most interesting things about it. 

What makes KILL ME TOMORROW notable is that it is the film Terence Fisher directed before THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. After CURSE, there would be no more black & white contemporary crime stories for Fisher. If the average person watches KILL ME TOMORROW and THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN back-to-back, that individual wouldn't believe both films were directed by the same man. I think that's a point in Terence Fisher's favor.