A Life in the Balance is a 1955 American-Mexican thriller film directed by Harry Horner and Rafael Portillo and starring Ricardo Montalbán, Anne Bancroft and Lee Marvin.

Trying to support Paco in the face of unemployment and neighbors who want custody of his son, Gomez argues with an ex-girlfriend over money that she owes him.

His girlfriend is murdered by the religious fanatic serial killer terrorizing the city, who stabs his young female victims and leaves them with their arms folded.

In his syndicated column, Jimmie Fidler wrote: "[I]ts suspense moments are among the most gripping I have seen in a long series of reviews.

"[2] Critic Dorothy Masters of the New York Daily News wrote: "An extraordinarily suspenseful story by Georges Simenon loses some of its electric charge in the conductive apparatus set up in Mexico for bridging book and screen.