A Kiss Before Dying

A Kiss Before Dying is low-level trash that works. It's far from ambitious, and even considered within the cheap-thriller category, this movie is nothing to make a fuss about. And yet the production is perfectly watchable. [03 May 1991, p.6]

What's missing here though is the novel's trick of being a wonderfully contrived mystery on the surface while underneath lurks an angry and upsetting analysis of class injustice in the USA.

Deceptions drive A Kiss Before Dying. Too bad they're too implausible to impart any sense of believability in this bloody fantasy. [26 Apr 1991, p.10]

A Kiss Before Dying is another failed remake, never approaching the claustrophobic pressure of the far grittier and more highly charged 1956 version with Robert Wagner, Joanne Woodward and Mary Astor. [26 Apr 1991, p.72]

For those of us who don’t fancy ourselves connoisseurs of badness, A Kiss Before Dying is less than delectable. It’s a real botch-a-thon, and it gets worse as it goes along.

A Kiss Before Dying is nothing if not devious. But it's also a textbook example of incompetent direction. [29 Apr 1991, p.C5]

With its waxy color scheme and nonexistent pace, the movie is like an homage to Hitchcock’s worst period.