‘Murder by Contract’: This Guy Kills Me

Vince Edwards, Caprice Toriel, 'Murder by Contract' (1958).

Dreams of a suburban home,
picket fence and a garden

can lead a man to homicide

By Paul Parcellin

"I want to be a contractor,” announces Claude (Vince Edwards), a determined, 30ish guy in the middle of an unusual kind of job interview at the start of “Murder by Contract” (1958). The shot cuts to an abrupt closeup as he utters those words, emphasizing that this is a turning point in his life, the first step on the way to becoming a professional hitman. 

It may have taken a lot of thought before making his decision, but we’re never sure because almost all of Claude’s past is cloaked in mystery. In the course of the meeting he reveals to his interviewer, a retired real estate man named Mr. Moon (Michael Granger), that he never writes anything down, meaning he doesn’t leave a paper trail. But that could also describe his shadowy presence as a man with no personal history, certainly none that he’s willing to share. What we do know are the meager facts he reveals and whatever else we can glean from his actions. 

He’s got a decent paying job with benefits, but wants to buy a house and needs more money to do so. As a potential hitman, his vocation puts him well outside the mainstream, but his basic middle class aspirations are rather, well, mundane. Underneath the bravado, Claude is just a square. He’s after that thing described in a trite couplet we love to parrot, the “American dream,” the only difference being that he’s willing to take a route that is untraversable for most of us. 

His interviewer asks him what makes him different from others. “I don’t make mistakes,” he says. We gather that from the methodical way he operates, the careful, almost ritualistic way he dresses prior to his interview. Those lacking a more conventional moral code cling tightly to a rigid order of their own, you see. 

Claude's exercise regimen echoed in 'Taxi Driver.'

Mr. Moon tests Claude’s mettle by making him wait for the phone call that will offer him an assignment, and Claude’s self-confidence and determination remain in place like a wall of granite.

He waits at home for the phone to ring, dressed in a jacket and J.C. Penny tie, then doing calisthenics in his shabby rooming-house quarters. By the way, the obsessive workout scenes in “Taxi Driver” (1976), in which Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) exercises feverishly in his own scruffy room, were inspired by Claude’s workout regimen, according to director Martin Scorsese, who maintains that “Murder by Contract” had a greater impact on him as a filmmaker than any other feature film. 

Murder in a barber shop.

When Claude finally makes the grade as a hired killer, he dispatches a couple of targets in a businesslike manner, staying perfectly cool in each of apparently his first two professional killings. The film’s scenes echo Claude’s economy of style, just showing enough to give us the idea of what is about to happen, particularly when violence occurs. We never see much of the rougher stuff, but are chilled when Claude, posing as a barber, strops a straight razor as a target relaxes in the chair, languidly unaware of what is to come. He used the tools at hand and never carries a gun lest he be stopped and searched. 

So many blanks are left for us to fill in that “Murder by Contract” feels as edgy as French new wave cinema. It wouldn’t look out of place on a double bill with Jean Pierre Melville or Robert Bresson’s work of that same era. In fact, Claude’s zen-like focus on his new vocation seems echoed by Jef Costello (Alain Delon) in Melville’s “Le Samourai” (1967).

When Claude’s unseen employer is finally convinced of his reliability, Claude is sent to Los Angeles on a special contract, the details of which he doesn’t learn before accepting the job. In the City of Angels he meets up with two handlers, George (Herschel Bernardi) and Marc (Phillip Pine) who are meant to oversee Claude, but Claude turns the tables on them. Befuddled and nearly at the end of their rope, the two don’t seem so much like gangsters, more like student teachers trying to keep the class bad boy under control. 

Herschel Bernardi, Edwards, Phillip Pine, the killer and his handlers.

Their interactions bring a touch of wit that a story as grim as this needs. Fitting in perfectly with the film’s minimalist style, the musical soundtrack by Perry Botkin, which is often a single guitar, is as spare as it is effective — think of Anton Karas’s zither soundtrack in “The Third Man” (1949). 

Director Irving Lerner hit a home run with this, one of his handful of gritty crime dramas. Before directing “Murder by Contract,” Lerner made documentaries, produced and edited films, then shifted gears with low-budget feature films including “Edge of Fury (1958) (sharing directing credits with Robert J, Gurney, Jr.), “City of Fear” (1959) as well as a number of dramas, war pictures,  westerns and TV shows. With “Murder by Contract,” he handles with assurance what must have seemed like edgy material in 1958. Lerner’s confidence is reflected in Claude, who is unconventional and sure of himself to the point of cockiness. 

Claude is a bit of a rock star compared with the two mob errand boys, and they both know it. George comes to admire Claude while Marc is fairly disgusted with him. His opinion doesn’t improve when Claude insists on relaxing instead of going to work. He swims at the beach, goes deep sea fishing and whacks golf balls at a driving range — Claude enjoys exasperating them both.

As cool and detached as he appears, Claude’s mood changes dramatically when he learns that the person he’s been hired to kill is a woman. She’s the wife of a deceased mobster who’s set to testify against the organization. He doesn’t like the idea of killing a woman, not that he believes it’s wrong, but unlike men, they’re unreliable, he says. You can predict when a man will move and where he will stand, but women move in unexpected ways. 

Claude breaks his own rule and uses firearms.

It’s telling that he refers to women as “unreliable,” perhaps alluding to his own relationships with women — perhaps even his mother. His rage comes to the surface when a room service waiter delivers a coffee cup with lipstick stains. He denigrates the waiter’s work ethic and remarks that the lipstick was left by “some pig” — he refers to women that way more than once, especially if he believes they have loose morals. Beyond his revulsion over a dirty cup, the lipstick traces convey the presence of a female and that upsets him and temporarily shakes his confidence. But, despite his moralistic judgment of women he’s not above ordering up a call girl when he sees fit. 

As his deadline approaches he finally gets down to the business of murder. His target is hiding out in a house nestled away in the Coldwater Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles and is under police guard. That means he must keep his distance while doing the job, but his initial attempts at striking from the hillside above the house don’t go as planned. 

Billie Williams (Caprice Toriel) in leopard print, like big game.  

He’s forced to take another tack, this time getting close to the woman, and the stress on him is telling. He plans meticulously as usual but is unsteady on his feet. 

In what proves to be his downfall, he forges ahead, not only because he faces a dour fate if he fails — by this point his boss believes he’s botched the job and he’ll be lucky to get out of town alive. His obsessive work ethic compels him to complete the job, like any industrious citizen pursuing a comfortable suburban life on a leafy byway. In other words, the American dream.