Why Must I Die? (1960) User Reviews (6)

A low-rent "I Want To Live!"

[melvelvit-1 · 6/10 · 15 July 2007]

After a narrow escape during a botched heist, Lois King (Terry Moore) calls it a day and walks out on her small-time boyfriend, Eddie, and her ex-con dad to start a new life. She relocates to another city, finds work as a nightclub singer, and rises to become the headliner at a swank supper club owned by Kenny Randall. In love with Kenny and preparing for marriage, Lois gets an unwelcome visitor- Eddie and his new moll, Dottie Manson (Debra Paget)- who blackmail her into helping them rob Randall's safe. The scheme doesn't go off as planned, however; Dottie shoots Randall and takes off with the money while Eddie flees the scene after trying to run Dottie down. Lois is arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death for the crime despite the best efforts of her sympathetic lawyer (Bert Freed). Dottie is eventually arrested for another robbery and sent to the same prison as Lois, but refuses to confess to Randall's killing. Lois' only hope now is for Eddie to come forward but, confronted by Lois' dad, he accidentally falls to his death -and time is running out...

In addition to earning Susan Hayward an Oscar, I WANT TO LIVE! (1958) was also a powerful plea for the abolishment of the death penalty. This low-rent rip-off did nothing for the career of its star, Howard Hughes' playmate Terry Moore, while capitalizing on the more sensational aspects of capital punishment. The poster screams "Only The Motion Picture Screen Would Dare Tell This Shocking Story!" and has Debra Paget yelling, "Honey, you're nothing but a good-time girl ...you're guilty as sin!" with Terry replying, "I'm damned if I'm innocent ...damned if I'm guilty ...the only thing that counts is to LIVE!" The movie's tag line reads, "The TRUE story of a girl on Death Row!" but, although very loosely based on the ordeal of Barbara Graham, a disclaimer in the closing credits reads "any resemblance to persons living or dead..."

Mixing soap-opera with sensationalism, 1950's B-list pin-ups Terry Moore and Debra Paget get the chance to overact together in roles that require pulling out all stops. They can't quite pull it off, of course, but that only adds to the unintentional hilarity. Some of the more memorable moments include Moore, in prison, confiding in her doll and Paget blowing up a safe in capri pants and high heels. The teary-eyed Terry is forever getting bad breaks in life but Debra's risible role has her snarling every line and taking no prisoners; she kicks the cane away from an old blind man before shooting him in the back during a robbery because his ears may be witnesses. There's also a few in-jokes about Alfred Hitchcock: the music from VERTIGO is overused, one of the inmates killed her husband with a frozen leg of lamb, and Terry's Bible comes from the "Gates Motel". This was former Warner Bros. director Roy Del Ruth's final film and he gives this nonsense an air of respectability along with a well-done sequence or two. Terry Moore, who co-produced, gives herself four forgettable songs that stop the show for the wrong reasons and having her strapped into an electric chair with a hood pulled over her head comes not a moment too soon. The title tune (!) is saved for last and sung by Duane Eddy.

Classic Film fans may enjoy ogling Moore & Paget or catching Del Ruth's swansong, but others may be tempted to pull the switch themselves.

The Girl on Death Row

[richardchatten · 7/10 · 28 April 2019]

A quickie rehash of 'I Want to Live!', which had recently won Susan Hayward an Oscar, it bears the credit "A Viscount Films-Terry Moore Production"; and the once illustrious names of former Warner Bros. collaborators reunited in much reduced circumstances, director Roy Del Ruth and Oscar-winning cameraman Ernest Haller.

Despite its obvious poverty row origins (not to mention the AIP logo at the start; never an auspicious sign) this film contrives to be more glamorous than Hayward's film by making the heroine a successful nightclub singer rather than the sad loser that Barbara Graham was. And it also seriously hedges its bets by making her innocent.

In emulation of 'I Wanna Live!' it's long on sanctimonious anti-capital punishment outpourings. But since Dottie (surname Manson!), the beat chick who really dunnit, is presumably executed herself after the end credits (which are accompanied by a song sung by Duane Eddy!), her fate would have been a film in itself; and a much more interesting one; since she is incredibly guilty. Although Dottie's confession has to be beaten out of her by the other prisoners she promptly undergoes an extremely disappointing change of heart after Debra Paget as Dottie had so far shown so much promise as a wonderfully ruthless, resourceful and wholly amoral villainess while at large cracking safes and gratuitously shooting a blind man in the back during a hold up. Seeing her strapped to the electric chair would probably have proved quite satisfying. (Dottie's conversion doesn't even result in Moore being saved, so it was presumably dictated by the censor, since had Paget kept shtum she might conceivably have got away with murder.)

A few bars from Bernard Hermann's theme from 'Vertigo' occasionally pop up on the sound track by the way...

All right I killed him! I killed him! Is that what you wanna know!

[kapelusznik18 · 6/10 · 19 February 2015]

****SPOILERS*** Effective anti-death penalty movie released two years after the far more popular "I Want to Live" and a month after the headline grabbing, Caryl Chessman execution on May 2, 1960 in the San Quentin gas chamber. The film "Why Must I Die" showed how a innocent person can be executed by the state by mistake. It was popular nightclub singer Lois King's, Terry Moore, misfortune to get sucked into participating in a robbery of her place of employment the "Cockatoo" night club by hoodlum Eddie Rainey, Lionel Ames, and his safe-cracking gun moll Dottie Mason, Debra Paget.

With Eddie blackmailing Lois in exposing her ex-convict dad Red King, Fred Sherman, unsolved crimes that the two participated in he got Lois to help him & Dottie knock off the "Cockatoo's" weekly take. It just happened that Loiss' boyfriend Kenny Randell,Phil Harvey,showed up unexpectedly and was blown away by Dottie. With the luckless Lois who was found at the scene of the crime by the just awakened night-watchman who was put to sleep with a spiked cup of coffee, by Lois, with the murder weapon, that Dottie dropped, in her possession! Arrested tried convicted and sentenced to death for Kenny's murder, in what seemed like 15 seconds, Louis can only be saved if both Eddie & Dottie confessed to their crime-fat chance-to keep her from being strapped into the state electric chair. It's Lois' court appointed lawyer Mr.Adler,Burt Freed, who somehow feels that she's innocent and tries to get her execution date postponed until he can dig up new evidence in her favor.

***SPOILERS*** As things turn out it's Lois dad Red King who in trying to help his daughter screws things up big time by in trying to get his former partner in crime Eddie Rainey to confess his and Dottie's part in the robbery of the "Cockatoo" and murder of Kenny Randell. Red in trying to get him to confess to the police accidentally pushes Eddie off the fire escape of his 10th floor hotel room to his death! The only chance now for Lois to escape the hot seat now is Dottie who's now in women's prison together with Lois for a stick-up robbery where she ended up shooting a blind man whom she thought witnessed the robbery!

****MAJOR SPOILER***It's Dottie's enraged and fellow women inmates who get her, by working her over, to confess to her murder of Kenny Randell but as luck would have it Lois was already zapped, with 2,000 volts of electricity, before the warden or governor could stop the execution! We get to see here how justice can go wrong and an innocent person could end up dead for a crime that she or he didn't commit when the death penalty is involved. Unlike in a prison term it can't be reversed 1 or 10 or even 20 years later due to new found evidence. But in the case of the death penalty its permanent for the person who's sentenced and subjected to it!

Fits the frame

[bkoganbing · 3/10 · 19 May 2014]

This low budget independent film produced by Terry Moore is a plea against capital punishment. Producer Moore was able to get fellow contemporary star Debra Paget in this movie with her as they play a pair of knockabout girls who've definitely seen the seamier side of life. The only problem is that Moore winds up sitting on death row for a murder that Paget committed.

Moore was a small time crook herself, but she grows tired of the life and wants to make a clean break from it. She goes to work for club owners Robert Shayne and Phil Harvey as a singer. But old friends like Lionel Ames whom she was an accomplice with in pulling several jobs follow her.

Now Ames has Debra Paget in tow and she's one hard bitten dame that makes Moore look like Mary Poppins. The two pull a job on the club Moore was singing at and beautifully frame her for the robbery. The problem is that Paget kills Harvey and Moore fits that frame too.

As for the rest of it, all I can say is that for such hard bitten dame Paget folds easily enough with a little pressure. If you've seen Susan Hayward in I Want To Live you can figure out where the story takes us.

Hayward's performance in that is one of those once in a lifetime achievements by a player that are impossible to duplicate. That being said, plenty try and Terry Moore was one of them.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the financing for this low budget film was helped along a little by Howard Hughes. Terry was his main squeeze, but Hughes would have done this one from petty cash.

Why Must I Die is sincere enough, but it's also trashy and exploitive.

Loud, brash...and bad.

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 14 November 2023]

"Why Must I Die?" is a movie with a great title...but ultimately it's just a bad film...mostly due to a script that seems in need of a re-write.

Terry Moore plays Lois King, a woman who wants to make her living as a lounge singer. It's tough at first, but eventually she hits it big. But when this happens, an old boyfriend from her dark past arrives and announces that she's going to help him and his new girlfriend with a caper. Her actions from here on really make no sense and she ultimately arrives on death row.

The writing is poor. The acting, at times, is brash and anything but subtle. But the film also doesn't try very hard to be good or sophisticated and is a poor B-movie with little to recommend it.

A fun piece of Death House trash.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 28 April 2022]

I'm wondering after seeing this when it's Debra Paget Stern at the electric chair if she'll break into "Death Cometh to Me" which she sang in "The Ten Commandments" once upon a time when she was an A-list actress. She gives an absolutely wretched performance as a cold-blooded thief and killer who allows Terry Moorere to take the rap for a murder she committed. All she does is snare and scream and Bello, a one-dimensional harpy performance as opposed to the gentle character she played in the Cecil B. Demille epic. Moore isn't much better in this film that she produced that was apparently a statement against the death penalty even though it's obvious that her and Paget would be assassinated by the critics.

This is so melodramatic that I wonder if it influence John Waters in his creation of the Dawn Davenport role in "Female Trouble". Paget play as a character strickly one-dimensional who influences her boyfriend to look up old girlfriend in an effort to get her involved in a safe robbery, but Moore wants no part of a life of crime, something she's giving up to sing in a nightclub. Her big hit from this, "Love is like a Roulette Wheel" is a deliciously tacky song. In fact, everything about this, from the script to the character development to all of the performances and all of the twists, are straight out of dime-store pulp novels. I certainly enjoyed it, but subtle it is not. It was obviously very cheaply made, and as a low budget film noir, does have some interesting photographic elements especially the downtown Los Angeles tram ("Angels Flight") which I've seen in other cheap second-rate film noir camp classics. If there was ever a film ripe for parody, this is it.