VividSimon Simply Perfect

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

ksf-2 This one is all about Lloyd Bridges as "Sgt. Stagg". His daughter (Sallie Shockley) is married to muscley beach dude Steve (Frank Converse). Stagg catches Steve cheating on his daughter Tina, and is NOT happy. The poop hits the fan, bad stuff happens, and we're off to a who-dunnit. The music is SO 1970s ! the music could be from Columbo, or one of the psychological thinkers from that time. The plot could also have been an episode of Columbo. Ellen Corby is in here as Mrs. Simmons, who finds the dead body. Corby was Grandma, from the Waltons! Also John Fiedler, (Mister Peterson from Bob Newhart.) Fiedler was ALSO one of the voices of Piglet on Winnie the Pooh! Lloyd chews up the scenery, and way over-acts. I kept thinking of him as McClosky in "Airplane" ! Murray Hamilton is "Joe", the other cop trying to put the pieces together. Some great location shots around Los Angeles. Directed by Paul Wendkos, who did mostly TV stuff. About the only really big films he did were the GIDGET movies. Story by Art Wallace, who also worked mostly in television. It's not bad, but it ain't no Shakespeare. It made it to DVD, but I've never seen this one shown on TV or cable.

Chase_Witherspoon Average TV movie concerning cranky cop (Bridges) whose son-in-law (Converse) is having an affair with local harlot (Helm) that threatens to de-rail his marriage to Bridges beloved daughter (Shockley). Bridges tries to convince both Converse and Helm (separately) to end the infidelity, but goes too far, resulting in the title woes.Murray Hamilton is reliable as Bridges' loyal police buddy, concerned by his colleague's apparent carelessness in handling aspects of the murder case, while familiar faces Walter Brooke, James Hong, John Fiedler and Whit Bissell have small roles. Broderick Crawford has a key supporting role as a drunk fingered for the crime, but Hamilton's not convinced by the forced confession obtained by Bridges. In my opinion Shockley, as the almost child-like daughter of Bridges over-protectiveness, does an outstanding job, neglected by her two-timing husband, but knowing more than she appears to comprehend.Small-scale thriller moves at an economical pace with solid performances and some moments of suspense. Experienced TV and movie director Wendkos knows how to fashion a taut thriller for 70 minutes, but where there was the promise of a tense climax on two occasions (in both the bedroom scene and cliff-edge confrontation with Converse), neither comes to fruition, instead, the conclusion is tepid and ultimately disappointing.

Hitchcoc While this is not "Crime and Punishment," it's still kind of a neat story. Lloyd Bridges plays an LA cop with a sterling reputation, but he is carrying around lots of baggage. He is so overprotective of his daughter because he has been hurt so many times himself. In order to continue that protection, he horns in on an affair his son in law is having with a young woman. While threatening this woman, he inadvertently kills her. The rest of the movie involves his efforts to cover things up and draw attention away from his daughter's husband. There is a tug based on Bridges' hypocrisy in that he has hated his son-in-law from day one, just for being his son-in-law. The plot stands up pretty well. The police are dupes in all this because of the outstanding record of the sergeant. The one character that really doesn't do very well is the daughter. She comes across pretty dull and doesn't have any hard edge at all. Late in the movie, when another police detective is trying to talk to her, she does her own version of the "if I just hold my hands over my ears I won't hear anything bad" routine. No wonder the guy went to another woman. As I said, there's a lot of angst, some decent acting, some not so decent, but it will hold one's attention for an hour and a half.

rsoonsa A critically important component of virtually all successful cinema is suspense, a perception of uncertainty within the viewer as to what may ensue from the events occurring upon the screen, whichever genre, present even when we know an outcome (Apollo 13) if the work is done well; all of which is meant to point to a total absence of suspense in this weakly directed feature, which dully plods from scene to scene until its flat ending. Lloyd Bridges, cast as police sergeant Ed Stagg, has discovered that the husband (Frank Converse) of his daughter Tina (Sallie Shockley) is dallying with a local chippy and during Stagg's attempts to end the adultery, he accidentally commits a murder, upon which he forges a plan to place responsibility for the crime upon a local inebriate, tangentially providing a question of the title: was Scott's "What a tangled web we weave..." (Marmion) the intended source, inaptly transposed into "tattered"? (an amendment that would be of a piece within this poorly crafted affair). The film is steeped in cliché, hampered by a witless score, and the acting from the three mentioned leads is often embarrassingly bad, notably in the case of Bridges, which might be attributed to the hackneyed script if it were not that Anne Helm as the doxy and Murray Hamilton as Stagg's partner manage to make something of their material, while Broderick Crawford rises above his during his few scenes.