Murder Is My Beat-1955-It packs some punch

Edgar G. Ulmer's embracement of the limitations of low-budget filmmaking was rarely more extreme or effective than in this tiny, marvelously incoherent thriller made for Allied Artists in 1955. Ulmer's camera records the absurd action through a series of icily detached pans: it's a film made through the wrong end of a telescope, in which the characters become puny figures caught up in a grand, cosmic plot they (and we) have no hope of understanding, while a sinister intelligence broods over all. With Barbara Payton, whose own life story was strange and sad enough for an Ulmer film, and Paul Langton.



Mr. Dean's body is found face down in the fireplace, his features burned beyond recognition. Detectives Patrick (Paul Langton) and Rawley (Robert Shayne) arrest nightclub-singer Eden Lane (Barbara Payton) and she is convicted of the crime. On the way to prison, Eden sees a man through the train window, identifying him as the murderer, and Patrick and Eden jump from the train to search for the man. In a series of plot twists, the murderer is found, and Eden and Patrick are reunited. Directer Edgar G. Ulmer uses flashbacks and elliptical editing to good effect, but the film lacks any strong visual or narrative center. Barbara Peyton delivers a great performance as the ambiguous, mysterious femme-fatale

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