A Kiss Before Dying ** (1991, Matt Dillon, Sean Young, Max von Sydow, Diane Ladd, James Russo) – Classic Movie Review 1,669

Matt Dillon won praise for the watchable 1991 romantic suspense thriller film A Kiss Before Dying, but poor Sean Young won Golden Raspberry Awards for both Worst Actress and Worst Supporting Actress! 

Sean Young stars as rich twin sisters, who both have a fatal attraction for a charming cold killer (Matt Dillon), in writer-director James Dearden’s watchable but uninspired 1991 remake of the 1956 movie of Ira Levin’s classic thriller novel A Kiss Before Dying.

Its idea to cast the same actress in the twin sisters roles is a simple but clever one. They were played by Joanne Woodward and the little-remembered Virginia Leith in the original A Kiss Before Dying, with Robert Wagner (then only 26) giving a career best performance as the killer. Incredibly meanly, Sean Young won two Razzie Awards in 1992 as Worst Supporting Actress For Playing the Twin Who’s Murdered and Worst Actress For Playing the Twin Who Survives. That is Golden Raspberry Awards for both Worst Actress and Worst Supporting Actress!

Matt Dillon plays the career-obsessed Philadelphia student Jonathan Corliss, who courts the ultra-wealthy Dorothy Carlsson (Young) to get in with her family and see if they can help his ambitions. He keeps the affair a secret, and his plan is to ingratiate himself and do himself some good with her industrialist father Thor Carlsson (Max von Sydow). But when Dorothy gets pregnant, Jonathan knows this will sour her relations with the father, prompting him to murder her in cold blood, and make it look like suicide.

But Jonathan hasn’t done with the Carlsson family and his ambitions, so he relocates to New York, plotting to court her twin sister Ellen to marry her and gets his hands on the family fortunes. His plan seems to be working, but Ellen turns out to be the canny sister, not a pushover like Dorothy, and she starts investigations into her sister’s death, convinced it wasn’t suicide.

Director James Dearden ensures that it is flashy and fast moving, and stirs up some simmering, smouldering suspense against as backdrop of self-consciously artily stylish visuals. But, despite the conscientious work, alas there is not really enough tension and excitement in a movie that struggles to do justice to Levin’s novel. As it plans to go that Nineties route, it needs to be more erotic and more stylish.

Perhaps that is why the well-cast and talented Dillon and Young do not seem particularly inspired or fired up. It is a great thriller story when done right, as the 1956 movie shows, but this one doesn’t make an urgent case for its remake, especially with the original being so brilliantly stylish and suspenseful.

James Russo and Diane Ladd (as Jonathan’s mother, Mrs Corliss) co-star. Martha Gehman, Joie Lee, Ben Browder, Adam Horovitz and James Bonfanti (as the young Jonathan) also appear.

There are some scenes of tough violence, graphic sensuality and strong language.

James Dearden, the son of vintage producer-director Basil Dearden, wrote the screenplay of Fatal Attraction in 1987 and wrote and directed Rogue Trader in 1999.

Ira Levin won the 1954 Edgar Award for Best First Novel for A Kiss Before Dying, published in June 1953, when he just 23. Horror author Stephen King called Levin’s first novel ‘a gritty suspense story told with great élan’. King is a bit of a fan. He called Levin ‘the Swiss watchmaker of the suspense novel’.

Levin went on to write Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives and The Boys from Brazil, as well as the play Deathtrap. All of them made wildly successful movies: Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, The Boys from Brazil and Deathtrap.

Overall it was a terrible mistake to try to remake A Kiss Before Dying. Could it have been a better film with the new cast they had in mind? This time they wanted River Phoenix, who ‘didn’t feel a connection to the material and felt he was unsuitable’, and Bridget Fonda, who quit through ‘scheduling conflicts’.

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The cast are Matt Dillon as Jonathan Corliss, Sean Young as Ellen/ Dorothy Carlsson, Max von Sydow as Thor Carlsson, Diane Ladd as Mrs Corliss, James Russo as Dan Corelli, Ben Browder as Tommy Roussell, Martha Gehman as Patricia Farren, Jim Fyfe as Terry Dieter, Lachele Carl as Reporter, Shane Rimmer as Commissioner Malley, and Adam Horovitz as Jay Faraday, Joie Lee, Adam Horovitz, and James Bonfanti as the young Jonathan.

A Kiss Before Dying runs 94 minutes.

It was released on 26 April 1991 (Los Angeles) and 14 June 1991 (United Kingdom).

The box-office was poor. The first week’s US gross was $4,348,165 and receipts for the four-week run were $14,478,720, against a budget estimated at $15 million.

The film was mostly shot in the UK, on location and also including Lee International Studios. with some location filming in the US in Charlottesville, Virginia; New York City; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Awards: 1991 Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Actress (Sean Young as Ellen Carlsson) and Worst Supporting Actress (Sean Young as Dorothy Carlsson).

High praise for Matt Dillon came from Roger Ebert: ‘This is Matt Dillon’s first film since Drugstore Cowboy, and he demonstrates again that he is one of the best actors working in movies. He possesses the secret of not giving too much, of not trying so hard that we’re distracted by his performance.’

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1,668

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