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A BLUEPRINT FOR MURDER (1953) Directed by Andrew Stone and starring Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters, and Gary Merrill, this very minor noir’s greatest interest is that it provides a mirror image to Hitchcock’s deservedly better known Shadow of a Doubt, which also stars Joseph Cotten. But this time it is Cotten as the party obsessed with the possibility that a close family member is a serial murderer. Some noir films are undeniably among the greatest movies ever made, while the appeal of others lies in their numerous and obvious flaws. A Blueprint for Murder is decidedly of the second type.The movie opens with the urgent whine of sirens as an ambulance rushes a stricken patient to a Manhattan hospital. Whitney “Cam” Cameron (Joseph Cotten) arrives and asks to see his niece, Polly Cameron. Admitted to her room he meets with his sister-in-law, Lynne Cameron (Jean Peters). Both are quite concerned as the doctors don’t know what’s wrong with Polly, and judging by her screams the stricken teenager is in awful pain. Repeatedly, she oddly yells, “Don’t touch my feet!” But by the next morning the girl is resting comfortably and seems to have recovered from her sudden attack, however, the doctors are still stumped by the cause.Leaving the girl’s room, Lynne invites Cam to spend a few days with her family. She mentions that her son Doug had taken his father’s recent death hard and could benefit from his uncle’s presence. Cam is in the oil business and his company is about to open a new field in Venezuela, but he promises to at least come for dinner that night. That evening we see Cam, Lynne, and a nine year-old Doug enjoying a wholesome game of Monopoly. Uncle Cam has decided to stay for a few days after all and the boy is excited by the prospect.Doug says that he misses Polly, however, and adds that it was awful the previous night when his sister had kept shouting, “Don’t touch my feet!” Ominously, the boy reveals, “Dad was just like that when he died.” Lynne interjects that the boy has an over-active imagination and that her husband had actually died of viral encephalitis. Uncle Cam asks if Doug might spend next summer with him—he lives in Boston and keeps a sailboat at Cape Cod. Lynne agrees and the boy is thrilled as he is sent off to bed.We then find out that Lynne is actually Polly and Doug’s step-mother–she had married the now deceased Bill Cameron after the death of his first wife. Cam tells her that she’s done a wonderful job raising the children. At just that moment Lynne receives a call from the hospital notifying her that Polly has suffered a sudden relapse.The next day Cam visits the apartment of his friends, Fred and Maggie Sargent (Gary Merrill and Catherine McLeod) and tells them that at 3:00 am his niece Polly died in the hospital. Cam confides that he’s concerned because Polly apparently had similar convulsions to those suffered by her father and that her death is still mysterious to the doctors. Cam now suspects that there may be a hereditary illness at work, although in the earlier case the doctors had diagnosed his brother with a form of encephalitis. But any way you slice it, the mortality rate among the Cameron clan is beginning to run a tad high. Maggie fastens onto the strange phrase, “Don’t touch my feet!” and says that it rings a bell with her. She mentions an earlier murder case where in extreme pain the victim had kept saying, “Don’t touch my hands!” In that instance the poor sod had been revealed to be a victim of strychnine poisoning.Next we see Maggie and Cam in Dr. Stevenson’s office, asking about the possibility that Polly could have succumbed to strychnine poisoning. Stevenson dismisses the idea as farfetched, but concedes that they haven’t yet determined exactly what did kill the girl. The doctor had in fact suggested an autopsy, but Lynne had been too squeamish to allow it. When pressed as to who could have poisoned the girl, Maggie shrugs and says, “Lynne.” In reaction, Stevenson says that he wants no part in this, and Cam, too, is in disbelief. Cam comes to his sister-in-law’s defense and says that Maggie doesn’t really know her or what a fine mother Lynne is. Cam reveals that he’s planning on staying with his family until at least the end of the week, and with her investigative juices flowing, Maggie says that this will give her a few more days to dig in to things.We now watch Cam and Lynne in a moment of domesticity–she’s wearing pearls and an evening dress and playing the piano while Cam sits adoringly beside her. In a voiceover (a trademark device of noir) we hear him say, “The more I was with Lynne the more I realized what a fine, lovely person she was.”Cam stays over for a week and then promises Lynne that he’ll return as soon as he can. At just this point Fred Sargent calls–as a lawyer he had handled Cam’s brother Bill’s estate and he now confides that Lynne’s inheritance is held in trust. She only receives the interest unless both children were to die. Cam dismisses the motive but agrees to meet with Fred the following day. Lynne now tells Cam that she’s planning to take Doug on a long European tour to “out of the way places” for perhaps as long as a year or more.The next morning at the Sargent’s apartment Cam is adamant about Lynne’s innocence. It’s clear that he’s begun to be smitten by his sexy sister-in-law. But the Sargents stress that the estate is over $1 million and suggest that young Doug might be in danger off in the backwaters of Europe. Maggie cites a number of cases of women poisoners for profit, but Cam points out that the doctors found no trace of strychnine. Maggie isn’t slowed for a second–she refers to notorious murderers like Dr. Crippen and says that if the doctors don’t expect poison then they often don’t look for it. It then comes to light that Lynne had originally wanted Polly’s body cremated, but that Cam had talked her out it. Cam now gives Fred permission to get a court order for an autopsy of Polly’s remains.That night, while having cocktails with Lynne and a “Shirley Temple” for Master Doug, Cam receives a call from Fred. “Here it is,” Fred says grimly, “the kid had enough strychnine in her to kill four people!” The district attorney now suspects murder and intends to have Lynne and the servants brought in for questioning. Cam breaks it to Lynne that Polly was poisoned. She takes it calmly and agrees to be interviewed, saying that if someone murdered her daughter then they have to find out who it was. The following morning after the interviews, the police inform Cam and Fred that so far they’ve uncovered nothing of value, but that they have at least narrowed down their suspects to Lynne Cameron and three of the servants. They add that unfortunately it will be virtually impossible to obtain a conviction without a confession.In a Columbo-like afterthought, the ADA (Jack Krushen) tells Cam that they’re also having the body of his brother Bill exhumed and autopsied as it might shed light on the present case. Cam says that he’s going to do a little sleuthing on his own and agrees to meet Fred the following evening at the attorney’s club.At the club, Cam is quite agitated when he shows up and is anxious to confer with Maggie and Fred. He tells them that from his research he’s discovered that in cases of strychnine poisoning that the victims suffocate during convulsions caused by exposure to the toxin. This suggests that Polly had actually received a second fatal dose while in the hospital. Oddly, neither the doctors or the police had explored this angle, although when confronted by Cam the medical examiner had been forced to agree that the premise was entirely plausible. Duh, now just who had access to Polly in the hospital as well as a motive for mayhem? According to the hospital records Polly had received a series of calcium capsules with no ill effects. But when given a final capsule that night she had become nauseated and not long after she had convulsed and died. Could someone have spiked the last capsule?The following day Cam checks with the hospital pharmacy and strangely they tell him that they have no record of dispensing the final prescription. He next interviews the nurse on duty the night that Polly passed. When questioned about the final dose of medicine she says that she was about to send out for it as the hospital pharmacy was closed, but that instead Mrs. Cameron had volunteered to have it filled. It’s awfully hard to believe that this could comply with hospital protocols.The nurse later gives evidence before the district attorney and states that the prescription bottle she had received from Mrs. Cameron was corked, not sealed. Next they interview Mrs. Cameron’s chauffer. He not only drove his employer to a local pharmacy that evening, but he had also been the one to actually have the prescription filled. But after he had given it to Mrs. Cameron, for unknown reasons she had had him drive her to her apartment before returning to the hospital. Hmmm. When her turn comes to make a statement, Mrs. Cameron explains that she had simply returned home in order to get a brush, comb, and other personal items for Polly, whose condition at that point had dramatically improved. After telling her that they will go easy on her, the police now grill her as hard as they can but Lynne is a match for them all and remains calm and firm. She insists that she knows nothing whatever about the poisoning.Afterwards, Lynne selflessly asks Cam to take care of Doug for her if the investigation should go against her. By now the police are convinced of Lynne’s guilt, but the district attorney feels that they don’t have enough evidence to back up a successful prosecution. The district attorney’s assistant says, “If we don’t come up with new evidence we’re dead.” Cam grimly replies, “So’s the boy.” The D. A. informs Cam that the autopsy results are in and there’s no evidence of poisoning in the death of his brother. But out of concern for Doug, with great misgivings, the district attorney decides to proceed with the case against Mrs. Cameron. In court, Lynne is unruffled and provides a reasonable answer to every question. Upon weighing the facts of the matter the presiding judge dismisses the case while Mrs. Cameron sits primly in court, looking poised and elegant.At the conclusion of the proceeding Cam hypocritically rushes to Lynne’s side and duplicitously mouths, “I’m sorry you had to go through all of this,” when all the while he’s secretly scheming to steal custody of her stepson, Doug. This kind of deceptive behavior is essential if Cam is to earn his stripes as the morally ambiguous and obsessed noir anti-hero. In this regard at least he is successful by the film’s end. Lynne agrees when he says he’ll return the boy who’s been staying with him the following day. Cam and Fred now rush to meet a probate judge, but based on the insubstantial nature of their argument he’s unwilling to help them. The terms of Bill Cameron’s will awarded his widow custody of his two children, and they have no concrete evidence to support the claim that she is an unfit mother. Fred melodramatically wails, “And I helped your brother with that will… it was a death warrant.”Cam, Fred, and Maggie stay up all night vainly attempting to construct a gambit that would allow his uncle to keep Doug safely in his custody. By dawn they are exhausted and frantic. With no other option, Cam later brings Doug home. Lynne appears thrilled to have her stepson back with her. Hesitantly, she now informs Cam that they’re going to have to change their plans for Doug to spend the summer with his uncle. After enduring the recent courtroom “nightmare” Lynne now wants to get away to Europe as quickly as possible. She has tickets for a cruise ship leaving the next day. Cam looks concerned but raises no objections. Now and later, it’s striking how cordial Lynne is to him under the circumstances.Next we see Cam in a shop which sells gardening supplies, where he purchases a perfumed bottle of arsenic-laced “ant paste.”His attention is also drawn to a “rodenticide” consisting of aspirin-sized strychnine tablets etched with a “W” on each one. While Cam holds one pill in his palm the clerk comments, “There’s enough there to kill a horse!” My God, what must the neighborhood rats be like? And for that matter what’s with these olfactory demanding ants?The next evening aboard the cruise ship, we see an elegantly dressed Lynne taking her stepson to dinner in the huge, chandeliered dining hall. Suddenly Doug shouts, “There’s Uncle Cam!” and bolts across the room. At first Lynne understandably looks less than thrilled to see her brother-in-law. And whatever Cam has spent his first day aboard ship doing, it wasn’t polishing up his story. When the boy asks what he’s doing there he says, “I just decided to take a little cruise myself.”When Lynne joins them he lamely offers, “I decided to come along… just one of those things.” With only a hint of sarcasm she responds, “That explains everything.” But all in all she takes it calmly and good naturedly teases her stalker about his sudden impulse. After dinner they put Doug to bed in the stateroom suite and the pair take a cozy walk up on deck.“Now, the real reason, hmm?” inquires Lynne wearing a playful smile. Proving that his spinelessness allows him to stoop to any depth, Cam unctuously offers, “Well, standing by while you went through this horrible ordeal was as miserable for me as it was for you.” Oh, really? With an entirely straight face he goes on to say that from the time she first mentioned a European trip he’d always planned to come along because he realized how very much he’d miss her if he didn’t. But when he retires to his own cabin, Cam looks quite dyspeptic. Pantomiming a man in anguish he dumps a small bottle of cologne and refills it with the scented arsenic “ant paste.” However it smells, it’s much more of a liquid than a paste. Despite his doubts about whatever scheme he may be entertaining, Cam goes back up on deck and flings the empty ant paste bottle over the rail.In a smug voiceover Cam tells us, “Lynne played right into my hands. My plan couldn’t have been going more smoothly.” In the days ahead he becomes Lynne and Doug’s constant companion, sharing every banal shipboard amusement and activity with them. Cam drones on in his self-serving and interminable monologue, “Yes, it could have been a wonderful trip, if only the circumstances had been different. But there were moments when I was horrified by the enormity of my plan. A cold fear would come over me. There were those fearful moments of doubt when I would speculate on the possibility of her not being guilty at all. But always my mind would come back to the irreconcilable fact–Polly was murdered and somebody did it. And all of the evidence pointed to that somebody being Lynne.”He finally determines to make his move on their last night at sea. Popping the poison-filled cologne bottle into his pocket, he heads for Lynne’s cabin. That evening they’re attending the Captain’s Ball, but first Cam goes into Doug’s bedroom to say goodnight. Now cocktails are brought to the cabin by a steward. Cam’s plan becomes apparent. He intends to poison Lynne in order to possibly save his nephew’s life. But wouldn’t it be easier and safer to simply give her a shove over the railing during one of their nocturnal constitutionals? At any rate, the sanctimonious and overwrought Cam opts to preface injury with insult and he trowels it on. He tells her that he wishes he’d met her before his brother had and that he’d thought her the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Maybe this is a test? If she can swallow this stuff then any poison will be easy-peasy. But when the moment arrives for him to spike her drink he finds that he can’t do it. They drink their aperitifs without incident and then dine and dance at the ball, with all the while Cam attempting to rally enough gumption to do the deed.Prior to a “turn” around the deck, Lynne sends him to her cabin to fetch her coat–there’s a chill in the air doubtless coming from those drafty holes in the plot. There he makes a fateful discovery. Spying an open cosmetics case, he snoops among the many small bottles. He picks out an aspirin bottle and examines the tablets. Three are different! Each one is marked with a “W,” just like the strychnine rodenticide pills he’d seen in the shop. More than enough to kill a whole string of horses! He takes the suspect tablets, grabs the coat, and heads back to Lynne. But first he makes a quick phone call…After their stroll on deck, Cam takes Lynne back to her cabin and persuades her to share a nightcap with him, calling the bar for cabin service. For the first time we see them kiss, and then the drinks arrive. He slips a pill into hers while providing distraction by lighting her cigarette. Lynne complains that her drink is bitter, but knocks it down anyway. At that point, Cam the weasel tells her of the aspirin bottle he’d found, with the three odd pills, and let’s her know that she’s just ingested one. She takes it all in pretty calmly and explains that the unusual pills simply were left over from an earlier bottle of a different brand. Now clearly angry, she turns away and announces that she’s going to bed, but in her sleeping cabin she finds a strange man. He explains that he’s the ship’s detective and that he’s been eavesdropping as a witness. This explains the mysterious phone call that Cam had made.To both men now, Lynne insists that the pills were harmless. Embarrassed at being caught up in what increasingly seems to be a personal matter, the detective makes to leave but Cam detains him. Cam tells her that she took the drink five minutes earlier and that for another five minutes she can still be saved by the ship’s doctor. But after that… Lynne stays cool. She rationally suggests that either way there’s no point in summoning the doctor.If she’s innocent then he won’t be needed. And if she’s guilty then she’s going to die in the electric chair, anyway. Cam nervously presses her to call for help, but she now aggressively points out that if he has guessed correctly then he’ll soon be strapped into “Old Sparky” himself. She asks if knowing that she witnessed Polly’s agony and convulsions, does he really think that she’d risk that herself? She adds that it takes nerve to murder someone, implying that she may have it but that he clearly doesn’t. Appealing to the detective she says that Cam is treacherous, having lived in her home and courted her, all the while planning to steal her stepson and her freedom, if not her life. She waits out the additional five minutes and as a final blow tells Cam that she had actually been falling in love with him. And just a few minutes later she declares it all a farce and demands that both wimps leave her stateroom.Reeling from his defeat, Cam goes up on deck for a smoke. In another of his whiny voiceovers he ponders the events of the night. “I must have been insane… How could I have been so wrong?” He now attributes Polly’s death to a freakish mistake by a drug clerk. But at just that moment a ship’s officer informs him that he’s wanted in the surgeon’s office. Once there the doctor comes out and says, “It’s Mrs. Cameron. We were just able to save her life.” Lynne had phoned the doctor the instant the men had left her cabin.In what is mercifully his final voiceover, Cam sanctimoniously announces that Lynne Cameron was convicted of murder and awarded a life sentence, joining the ranks of other greedy, beautiful women poisoners. We are “treated” to a final scene of Uncle Cam flying off with his nephew, Doug, whom we presume he has adopted and will raise as a gutless wimp. And so an end finally comes to a movie where the men are all simpering, ineffectual twits and by far the most interesting character is the intrepid femme fatale.