Robert Wagner is excellent as a man with a passion to succeed in life, even if it takes murder to do it. The film is very stylish, with great use of wide-screen and color.

An uneasy genre-straddler. Wants to be noir (and certainly its source was!) but also a JD flick and color Picnic-type movie. Case in point: the ludicrously out of place opening titles (and music)...did this movie really need a theme song? Wagner is good, but some of the other acting (especially toward the beginning) is a bit unsteady. Unfortunately, they did away with the book's extensive background on Corliss' social-climbing obsession, so he becomes merely another run of the mill psycho.

Classic 1950's murder mystery/thriller starring Robert Wagner and Virginia Leith (who famously played a talking severed head in "The Brain that wouldn't Die"). A couple of nice twists and a great performance from Wagner (though some of the supporting roles were pretty wooden), this flick also has a handful of truly shocking/surprising moments. Quality entertainment.