Arthur Laurents

Two thrill-seeking friends strangle a classmate and then hold a party for their victim's family and friends, serving refreshments on a buffet table fashioned from a trunk containing the lifeless body. When dinner conversation revolves around talk of "the perfect murder," their former teacher becomes increasingly suspicious that his proteges have turned his intellectual theories into brutal reality.

A lonely secretary travels to Venice on a vacation with the secret hope of falling in love.