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After three murders, Tom Stewart (Colin Friels) goes to see school teacher Morris Martin (John Waters), on a tip-off from Sergeant Ray Birch. Martin recognises the reporter immediately – he teaches his students a lesson based on an earlier criminal case that Stewart wrote a book about. The book claimed that a man was wrongfully convicted. Stewart tells Martin that the man confessed to him after his second trial – ‘but that didn’t stop me writing it’. Stewart questions Martin about his connection to one of the murder victims, and the loss of his own wife six months earlier.
Curator’s notes
As in all film noir, no one tells the truth, or not the whole truth. We already know Morris Martin is the killer. Nevertheless, he is shocked when the reporter admits that he wrote a book defending a man he found out was guilty. Martin had a firm belief in the book’s veracity, even making his own mini-documentary about the case, to show his students. John Waters’s performance tells us he’s secretly appalled to discover the man was guilty (even though he himself is in the middle of a killing spree that will leave four bodies). This theme of double standard, and degrees of corruption, is the film’s strongest idea.
