Color Me Dead 1969

Frank Bigelow [Tom Tryon] discovers he has been poisoned and has only weeks to live, a discovery that sets off a relentless search for his own killer. The film opens with a tangled web of illicit dealmaking surrounding a rare iridium shipment. On one side, George Reynolds [Michael Laurence] is involved in a shady trade with the conniving Mr. Stanley Phillips [Peter Sumner], while Mr. Bigelow—the meticulous accountant who keeps plans on track—prepares for a quiet one-week vacation. He also wrestles with a personal rift: his relationship with his secretary and girlfriend, Paula Gibson [Carolyn Jones], has cooled, casting an uneasy shadow over his decision to take time off.

As Bigelow heads to his getaway, a transactional scene unfolds where iridium changes hands, with Phillips pulling the strings and the shady players maneuvering to avoid scrutiny. By the time Bigelow checks into a hotel and later goes to a nightclub called the Pink Panther with new acquaintances, danger begins to close in. A charming stranger at the club distracts him, and his drink is inexplicably tampered with. The doctor later confirms a luminous toxin in his system, a poison with no known antidote, and the prognosis is grim: less than a week remains, at best. The fact that Phillips may have had a hand in his fate becomes a growing, ominous possibility, though Bigelow still cannot pinpoint the exact motive.

With time running out, Paula informs him that Phillips has been urgently trying to reach him, but Bigelow remains ignorant of who Phillips really is or why he might want him dead. A glimmer of a lead arrives when Paula reveals that Phillips had died—by suicide, or so the authorities claim. Believing there is more beneath this apparent closure, Bigelow travels to Sydney to pursue the truth. There, he meets Phillips’s controller, Mr. Halliday [Tony Ward], and his secretary, Miss Foster [Penny Sugg], who offer a version of events that seems to place Phillips in a suicide role. Yet Bigelow senses a deeper conspiracy and decides to search Philips’s home, where the bereaved wife and other relatives remain tight-lipped.

Miss Foster, however, drops a crucial crumb: Phillips had contacted a model named Marlo Stevens before his death. This clue becomes the pivotal thread that pulls Bigelow toward the real culprit behind the poison and the iridium scheme. The trail leads him to Bradley Taylor [Rick Jason], a man furious at being duped in a deal that involved Philips and what he believed to be a legitimate transaction. Taylor explains the tangled ruse—how Philips sold iridium to him, how Taylor was cheated by Philips and his nephew George, and how the money eventually changed hands in a move designed to line Phillips’s pockets. The revelation upends Bigelow’s view of the crime and sets him on a collision path with those who would kill to keep their secrets hidden.

As Taylor’s men close in, Bigelow fights for his life, narrowly escaping murder and facing the brutal truth about the iridium’s chain of custody. In a climactic confrontation back at Philips’s residence, additional poisonings occur, and Bigelow pieces together that Halliday had not only facilitated the transactions but also stolen a substantial sum of money from the deal. Halliday’s duplicity proves deadly for him, and, with the clock ticking and his own life in jeopardy, Bigelow confronts Halliday, ultimately ending the danger he poses and turning the whole case over to the police. The tale closes on a note of grim justice, as a dying man’s relentless pursuit of truth leads to a resolution that brings the threads of deceit, murder, and greed into the light.