- Master of Suspense forced to shoot crime thriller in 3D but doesn’t phone it in
- Nonetheless, it was rarely seen in 3D for decades until 2012 digital restoration
- Countless spoofs, homages and remakes in all media help to sustain its legacy
- Source play author’s other most famous work also hit film with Audrey Hepburn
- The crime was nearly perfect but if a woman answers… hang on for dear life!
Note: this is part of an ongoing series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles; any dead links are to those not yet published. Subscribe to the email list to be notified when new ones appear.
Dial M for Murder: Writing on a Classic, Part 2 | Collectors Guide, Part 2: Home video and soundtrack
Contents
- Production
- Essays, etc
- Remakes
- A Perfect Murder (1998)
- Homages
- Grace Kelly
- Wait Until Dark 1967
- Related articles
Production
French/TV spot | Italian | Ciniplex | clips/more/more | 82-Second Dial M
“Gripping entertainment. Stylishly performed.” – Clive Hirschhorn, The Warner Bros. Story (1978)
“In 2D, it’s minor Hitchcock; in 3D, it’s major Hitchcock.” – Andrew Sarris, The Village Voice
Alfred Hitchcock’s screen version of Frederick Knott’s stage hit Dial M for Murder is a tasty blend of elegance and suspense casting Grace Kelly, Ray Milland and Robert Cummings as the points of a romantic triangle. Kelly won the New York Film Critics and National Board of Review Best Actress Awards for this and two other acclaimed 1954 performances (Hitchcock’s Rear Window and her Oscar-honored work in The Country Girl). She loves Cummings; her husband Milland plots her murder. But when he dials a Mayfair exchange to set the plot in motion, his right number gets the wrong answer – and gleaming scissors become a deadly weapon. Dial “M” for the Master of Suspense at his most stylish. – Warner DVD and BD
TCM | AFI: Leonard Maltin | TCM intros | Peter Bogdanovich (use subs)
Dial M is based on Frederick Knott’s eponymous hit play, which débuted as a March 1952 BBC TV play before transferring to the West End and Broadway stages later in the year. The author has a vanishingly small but effective résumé consisting of only a handful of plays and adapted screenplays. His other most significant work was the similarly successful 1966 play Wait Until Dark, filmed the following year as a very effective, distinctly Hitchcockian thriller starring Audrey Hepburn and since revisited on screen several times. Knott was anything but prodigious, preferring to effectively retire in his early fifties and live comfortably off his royalties to a ripe old age. I think he had the right idea.
Frederick Knott and Dial M for Murder: The Creation and Evolution of an Iconic Thriller (2026) – Richard Weill
Italian 1970s re-release poster by Angelo Cesselon
Hitch’s near-customary cameo, here achieved with necessary subterfuge due to the limited setting (he appears in a class reunion photo that’s typically unconvincing), is similar to his other two necessarily non-physical appearances in Lifeboat and Rope.
3D, along with colour, widescreen and stereo sound, was part of the studios’ concerted effort to fight back against dwindling audiences lost to television by offering what the small screen couldn’t. So most early 3D films employed eye-catching publicity and gimmicky effects shots to tempt them in, but Hitch preferred an understated but effective use of the medium to subtly enhance the storytelling, rather than draw attention to itself. It’s well-documented that Dial M hardly played in 3D at all on its original release, due to the then analogue format’s shortcomings, both technical and biological (some of which persist), and 3D’s novelty already falling out of favour with the movie-going public. Indeed, far more people have seen it in theatrical 3D since the 2012 appearance of the 4k digital restoration on DCP than ever did on its first run and any of its revivals in the six intervening decades. As Hitch himself famously quipped about 3D, “It’s a nine-day wonder, and I came in on the ninth day.” Of course, his next film, Rear Window, released later the same year and also with a single setting, would have made a much better subject for 3D – perhaps he should have stuck around for the tenth day!
- What Killed 3D? – 3-D Film Archive
- The Tragedy of 3-D Cinema – Rick Mitchell
Essays, etc
Iñaki Aliste Lizarrald, 2020
- The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock (2014) – Steven Jacobs | review, #2
- Dial M for Murder – Interiors Journal
- Dial M for Murder – Joe Valdez
- Dial M for Murder – Sheldon Hall
- Dial M for Murder – David Bordwell
- The Art of Murder – Iain Morrisson
- Dial M for Murder/On Bordwell – Ken Mogg
Dial M: Semiotics and Self-reflexivity
- Art of the Title: Dial M for Murder – Will Perkins
- Staged Fright: Dial E for Experiment/text – B. Kite
- Hitchcock frets not at his narrow room – David Bordwell
- The old broom that knows the corners best – Geoff Brown
- My Favourite Hitchcock: Dial M for Murder – Henry Barnes
- An In-Depth Look at Dial M for Murder – Bob Furmanek and Greg Kintz
- Hitchcock’s Headache of a Film – Jennifer O’Callaghan, author of Rear Window: The Making of a Hitchcock Masterpiece (2025)
Remakes
Firstly, though not a remake per se, there’s a 1974 anthology crime series of the same name featuring the cream of the era’s British screen talent, whose 13 episodes all revolve around telephones and, though not officially released, are on YouTube. Most recently, the play and film are the inspiration for a recently touted TV series. But there are also dozens of screen spoofs and versions of Knott’s play, with the earliest of the latter predating Hitch’s take, but only two appear to be commercially available; leave a comment if you know otherwise. Bei Anruf… Mord, a 1959 German TV movie, is very highly rated but unfortunately not subtitled on its only DVD to date:
Meanwhile, a 1981 TV movie with Angie Dickinson, Christopher Plummer and Anthony Quayle is decent but predictably, next to Hitch’s take, “suffers in the process of comparison” (The Boston Globe). It’s been released several times on VHS and is also on YouTube.
A Perfect Murder (1998)
Clips/#2/#3 | première | interviews/#2
“One of the slickest, savviest thrillers in a long time.” – Jeffrey Lyons, WNBC-TV/NY
“Sensuous, skillfully plotted. Nasty twists and tantalizing clues.” – Stephen Holden, NY Times
To Manhattan’s elite, Wall Street wheeler-dealer Steven Taylor seems like a devoted husband. He isn’t. Beautiful, accomplished Emily Bradford Taylor seems like a faithful wife. She isn’t. And when Steven hires Emily’s lover to kill her, it seems like A Perfect Murder. It isn’t. In fact, very little is what it seems in this sleek, sophisticated thriller sizzling with suspense and sharp dialogue. Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow and Viggo Mortensen star in A Perfect Murder, directed by Andrew Davis (The Fugitive) and inspired by the Frederick Knott play Dial M for Murder, filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1954. Fans of that classic will be in for a lot of surprises. So will Steven. At each unexpected twist in his “perfect” plot, he improvises brilliantly. But can he always stay one step ahead of the next jolt? Hold tight for “a hold-your-breath thriller” (Joel Siegel, Good Morning America/ABC-TV). – US LaserDisc (1998)
- US: DVD/reissue, also in 3-DVD Triple Feature and MD Collection, 4-DVD Box Office Hits and 4 Film Favorites: MD
- Canada: DVD, also in 3-DVD Triple Feature
- UK: DVD
- Italy: DVD/alt/reissue
- Germany: DVD
- France: DVD/reissue, also in 2-DVD Double Séance w/Final Analysis (1992)
- Spain: DVD
- Australia: DVD
- Brazil: DVD | dubs
Much more accessible than prior versions is the only big screen remake; a more expansive, glossy update whose releases are all from Warner Bros. Discs include two cast and crew commentaries, and a five-minute alternative ending with optional director commentary. DVDs first appeared in 1998, straight after the theatrical release; while Blu-rays arrived in 2012, just prior to those for Hitch’s version. Lastly, though all have the feature in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the American and some PAL DVDs additionally have a 4:3 open matte transfer, thus mirroring the DVDs of Hitch’s original.
- Prime Video HD | YouTube
- US: BD, also in 3-BD MD Triple Feature
- Canada: BD, also in 3-BD MD Triple Feature
- Italy: BD | Prime
- Germany: BD
- France: BD
- Spain: BD
- Australia: BD
- Brazil: BD
Varèse Sarabande CD/alt-MP3 A Perfect Murder OST (1998) – James Newton Howard (30:22)
Trailer/OM, teaser/#2, TV spot/#2 | French/teaser/TV spot, German/fan/#2, Italian/dub, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish/teaser/TV spots/clip
Homages
Charlize Theron channels Grace Kelly for Vanity Fair
Behind the scenes, video, reprint, with originals | Death and the Master: The Mythology of Hitchcock
Following in the footsteps of Marilyn Monroe and numerous other A-listers paying homage to their screen idols in the Christmas 1958 issue of Life, Vanity Fair painstakingly restaged scenes from the Master’s most iconic American movies with today’s stars for their March 2008 Hollywood Portfolio. 2013 saw the début of a witty one-act play inspired by Dial M and which also manages to sneak in many other Hitch film references, similar to the author’s prior effort, a noir homage. Both have been performed on stage internationally and are available in paperback and eBook, while the former is also in CD and audiobook form:
- Leading the Witness (2012) vid | Dial L for Latch-Key (2013) vid – Scott Fivelson
Lastly, there are a (rather worryingly) large number of re-enactments of the pivotal murder scene posted online but my favourite is this stylish effort reminiscent of what the film would look like if directed by Lotte Reiniger as a film noir.
Grace Kelly
Grace Kelly Quotes ‘Textportrait’ by Olivier Tops, 2017
James Stewart, co-star of Grace Kelly’s next film for Hitch, Rear Window, said, “Everybody just sat around and waited for her to come in the morning, so we could just look at her. She was kind to everybody, so considerate, just great, and so beautiful.” He also praised her instinctive acting ability and “complete understanding of the way motion picture acting is carried out.” According to Cary Grant, the co-star of To Catch a Thief, her third Hitchcock in a row, “She never distanced herself from others, and she was enormously friendly to everyone – no stuffy attitude, no star complex.” Also witty and given to self-deprecating comments, Kelly once said, “When Ava Gardner gets in a taxi, the driver knows at once she’s Ava Gardner. It’s the same for Lana Turner or Elizabeth Taylor, but not for me. I’m never Grace Kelly. I’m always someone who looks like Grace Kelly.”
- Alfred Hitchcock & Grace Kelly: A Trilogy – Elaine Lennon
- Hitchcock’s Blonde: Grace Kelly and AH (2009) – John Hamilton
- Grace Kelly: The Life Story You May Not Know/alt – Ellen Wulfhorst
- Classical Myth in Hitchcock’s Wrong Man and Grace Kelly Films (2019) – Mark William Padilla
- Prime Video
- US: Wellspring/Janson DVD (2004, reissued 2020) – region 0 NTSC; plays anywhere
- UK: Ilc Media DVD (2008) – R0 NTSC
- Australia: Ovation DVD (2008) – R0 PAL
Wait Until Dark 1967
Italian 1971 re-release, four sheet poster by Adelchi Serafini; its title translates as “The eyes of the night” (artwork, catalogue).
A blind woman plays a deadly game of survival.
Susy Hendrix is a young and beautiful woman who happens to be blind. She thinks she is alone in her apartment, comfortable and safe—but something doesn’t feel right. A chair has been shifted from its usual position. A strange odor lingers in the air. Suddenly, Susy Hendrix is afraid. And the terror is just beginning. Wait Until Dark is a shocker in the grand tradition, a heart-stopping drama to rank with classics of controlled suspense like Rear Window and Night Must Fall. Based on Frederick Knott’s hit Broadway play, it’s a film that proves you don’t need jack-in-the-box monsters or gory special effects to keep an audience trembling in delicious dread.
The plot hangs on a simple, fateful accident. Returning home, Susy’s husband Sam is given a doll by a woman he’s never seen before. The doll is filled with narcotics. Unknowingly, Sam brings it home to his wife—and a vicious killer uncoils a deadly deception to get it back. Audrey Hepburn stars as Susy Hendrix, turning in an exquisite performance that earned her a 1967 Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. At center screen for virtually the entire length of the action, she holds our emotions in the palm of her hand all the way. We can see what’s happening. Susy can’t. The dramatic irony builds moment by moment to an almost unbearable tension as Susy gradually learns the truth… and her greatest vulnerability becomes her only strength.
Alan Arkin appears as Roat, mastermind of the masquerade assault on Susy’s apartment, in a blood-chilling portrait of evil lit up by what might be the most astounding characterization in modern movie-villain history. If you think Arkin is only a comic actor, think again. Richard Crenna and Jack Weston co-star as the pair of con-men Roat blackmails into playing their multiple roles in his scheme. Crenna is particularly effective as Mike Talman, whose sympathies shift back and forth as he gradually gains Susy’s confidence—and ultimately tries to save her. Directed by Terence Young, with superbly claustrophobic art direction by George Jenkins, Wait Until Dark is a stylish, sophisticated thriller adults and older children can both enjoy. Like the best of Alfred Hitchcock, it cues its strongest effects in your imagination—where the scariest nightmares are always waiting until dark. – US Warner LD/VHS (1981/83)
The Last Light: How Hepburn Traded Elegance for Terror – Jennifer O’Callaghan, author of Rear Window: The Making of a Hitchcock Masterpiece (2025)
Why should a killer fear a blind girl? Wait Until Dark… and find out.
Now there are just two of them: Susy, recently blinded and still learning how to live in a sighted world, and Roat, a psychopathic killer. Roat wants a heroin-stuffed doll he thinks Susy possesses. All Susy wants is to survive. And her only hope is to Wait Until Dark. Dim the lights, check the door’s chain-lock and prepare to be frightened out of your wits by a brilliant exercise in suspense as polished as the steel of Roat’s blade. Audrey Hepburn (My Fair Lady, The Nun’s Story) earned an Academy Award nomination as Susy. And versatile Alan Arkin (The In-Laws, Edward Scissorhands) is pure evil as Roat, whose dreams of drug megabucks rest on a doll that may have ended up in Susy’s apartment. Comic actor Jack Weston and Richard Crenna as a smooth, almost sympathetic crook (a type he would later memorably replay as the husband in Body Heat) co-star as Roat’s henchmen. The trio plays cat to Susy’s mouse to secure the doll but the scheme unravels, leading to a heart-pounding one-on-one confrontation. Discover why Wait Until Dark “belongs to the screen’s most memorable thrillers” (David Shipman, The Story of Cinema, 1982). – US Warner LD/VHS (1993/95)
On-disc extras are “A Look in the Dark” featurette (8:38) and the teaser and theatrical trailers. The film’s wholly owned by Warner Bros. worldwide and theirs are the only legit releases, clearly marking out inferior bootlegs such as those from Brazil (New Line), Chile (Cinematekka/set), Italy (A&R Productions/BD-R, Sinister Film), Korea (Kanmovie) and Spain (Resen BD-R). Italy is notable for having no legit DVD and only boots but the identical UK, French and Australian DVDs, coded for regions 2 and 4, were originally also meant for Italian release as they include the relevant subs and dub. The identical region 0 Blu-rays have only English subs and audio. Caps-a-holic screenshots.
This was the fourth and last Hepburn-starrer to be scored by Henry Mancini, following Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Charade and Two for the Road. Though there was no contemporary soundtrack album, a single based on the main theme with added lyrics was released and has since spawned dozens of cover versions. In 2007 Film Score Monthly released a limited edition CD compiling the entire score and three unused tracks, and in 2010 Douglas E. Bischoff released an 11-minute suite inspired by the film.
- FSM CD Wait Until Dark OST (2007) – Henry Mancini | 50:33; 3,000 ltd ed
Clips, unremastered trailer | interviews
Dial M for Murder: Writing on a Classic, Part 2 | Collectors Guide, Part 2: Home video and soundtrack
Related articles
This is part of a unique, in-depth series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles.
