Perhaps it really started when scriptwriter Richard Blake, finishing last-minute revisions in the early hours of the morning, found the naked blonde on his driveway. Nobody ever saw her again, but she turned out to be a vital clue.

The movie's fading star is Caresse Garnet, a woman so universally disliked that you could throw a stone in Hollywood and find somebody who hates her: the producer who knows she's box office poison but can't fire her; the ingénue whose scenes are being cut to ribbons on her instructions; the director with a wife and a love-nest ...

All these ingredients add up to a story of a murder that couldn't happen - but does.