Dear Murderer
              
Director:  Shima Koji
Year:  1969
Rating: 6.0
This is somewhat of a fun murder film by the Shaw Brothers that for them was off of the beaten track. In particular in their choice of the actor to play the killer. Peter Chen (not a spoiler as we see him do it). Chen going back to his days with Cathay and then with the Shaws was almost always cast as the genial romantic lead that you would never notice at a cocktail party. But those were the types that were favored back then by audiences - women audiences anyways. He always seems so harmless, polite and manageable by his female co-stars. So it is rather fun to see him as an ambitious murderer. Not a very good one as it turns out. Practice makes perfect and he never had much practice in his career. So this isn't so much a murder mystery as we know who did it, but more about how the walls of guilt and suspicion close in on him and he begins to see ghosts.



Tu Chang (Chen) is the secretary to the Big Boss of a large corporation and sees this as his opportunity to throw off the shackles of his poverty and rise in the world. Especially when the boss's daughter (Betty Ting Pei - whose apartment Bruce Lee died in) takes a shine to him and wants to marry him. Problem is that he already has a lovely girlfriend (Pat Ting-hung) who is a secretary in the firm. And she informs him that she is pregnant. He does love her but marrying the boss's daughter just seems like the right move. What is a man to do. Well of course it is to commit murder. As an incompetent murderer Chen does a nice job with the look of a crazed lost dog in his eyes as he desperately just wants things to be normal again. Just stay dead, damn you!



The film's direction is credited to Shi Ma-san which is close to the Japanese word for "I will not" - which may just be a coincidence but in fact the director is Japanese but given a Chinese name in the credits. His real name is Shima Koji and as Run Run Shaw did with a few other Japanese directors he brought him over for a few films - Tropicana Interlude, The Orchid, Love Song Over the Sea and this one. Back in Japan he had a successful career going way back to 1939. My guess is that by the time he came to Hong Kong his career was sputtering a bit. In fact, these films for Shaw were his last as a director. There are a few little glitches along the way and a couple of holes - ok a lot of holes - but the one thing that bugs me - though it should not by now since we see it all the time in lower budget films - is when a scene begins at night - proceeds to a day time scene - and then we are back at night - in a time interval that should have been five hours at most.