..to the end of the line." Its tagline from a poster declared: "You can""t kiss away a Murder!"The sensational film was unlike many other films of its time - its storyline of a deliberate and brutal crime inspired by adultery and the promise of insurance money was considered innately amoral, objectionable, and distasteful by the censorious Hays Office (a "blueprint for the perfect murder").A second made-for-TV production was co-produced by pay-cable station Showtime and PBS""s American Playhouse in 1984, starred Tommy Lee Jones, Jessica Lange, Rip Torn, and Kim Stanley.Lydecker: Did I?McPherson: Yeah.But he was really killed with a sash weight.Lydecker: How ordinary.My version was obviously superior.I never bother with details, you know.McPherson: I do.Because murder is his "favorite crime" and he writes about it regularly, the renowned, droll columnist Lydecker insists on helping McPherson in his assigned investigation, even hough he is a suspect:I know you""ll have to visit everyone on your list of suspects.He angrily asked about the CIA""s efforts to get him: "Why are you trying to frame me?" She also admitted that Abbott ran Treadstone and "Conklin reported to him," and that the Berlin sting buy had "something to do with a Russian politician [Neski].Cold-blooded"), and to mount a vengeful attack to kill all of Gotham""s first-born male infants (recalling the story of Moses and the Pharaoh in the Bible, and also his own experience as a child) by drowning them in the toxic underground sewage water.