The Point of Betrayal

Story is about a rich woman (Dina Merrill) who finds a new husband (Rod Taylor) which terrifies his son-in-law (Rick Johnson) who's afraid he's going to lose his billion dollar inheritance. Son hires a nefarious nurse (Rebecca Broussard) to harass the mother until she signs over power of attorney to him. Their daughter (Ann Cusack) joins the group to try to sort things out. Set in a strange home built under a lighthouse, Rod Taylor is great as the interloper trying to stay in control while the son-in-law tortures everyone. Cusack is great as the do-good sister, while Broussard does her scenes with a combination of sex and snarkiness. Flick reminds me of those horror stories in Vanity Fair about families who'll do anything to get their parent's money.

I caught this movie on TV and was hooked until the very end. The story is about a very wealthy elderly widow who finds love with a contractor and marries him. The widow however has 2 children from her previous marriage. Her son is a greedy man, who resents the marriage as he doesn't want to have to share any inheritance he would receive after his mother passes on. The son hires a nurse who is given the job of making the wealthy woman sick, so the son can have her sign over control of the money to him.

I found Dina Merrill's performance to be quite good. It was so sweet to see how much her and the new husband loved each other. The son and the nurse were really creepy and made me feel really frustrated.

The only problem I had was that by the end of the movie I felt really angry and had no satisfaction at the ending. Was very disappointed.

Good performances, mostly good script, just a disappointing ending.

This is a strangely, and largely pointlessly, sinister film. For reasons which are not really explained, and which have no connection with the plot at all, elderly newly-weds Rod Taylor and Dina Merrill decide on a whim to spend $15 million buying a 'house' two stories below the surface of the earth, a kind of luxury bunker where you switch the daylight and starlight on and off with a remote. On top of this nightmarish 'home' with ghoulish murals of 'country scenery' sits a lighthouse! We only ever see this lighthouse in long shots and it also has no relation to the story. One suspects that some pages of several different scripts were dropped onto the floor, picked up, and interleaved by mistake in a single binding, and then they shot it as a film. There is a very strong and sympathetic central performance by an elderly Rod Taylor, who had proved decades earlier in 'Young Cassidy' that he really could act and not just be a movie star, and here he does that again. Dina Merrill is effortlessly genteel as Rod's wife, but it is difficult to sympathize with her because she is so bafflingly stupid. The most outstanding performance in this film is by Rebecca Broussard, as a slinky, smiling villainess who enjoys murdering people. She positively oozes sex from every pore, and looks as if she wants to rip all of her clothes off all of the time. Despite the fact that she had no nude scenes, all of her scenes are nude scenes, if you see what I mean. There is 'something about the way she moves', as the old song line goes. She really was a most talented actress, but seems to have abandoned the screen for motherhood. Her hysterically joyful portrayal of a psychopathic killer who cannot wipe sensuous grins off her face at the very prospect of wielding a 'killer hypodermic' (she is impersonating a nurse, and you should see her in that outfit which seems to slide around her body like a portable water bed!) is so disturbing that it remains in the mind long after the film has ended. The premise of the story is that the two children of a billionairess (the now remarried Dina Merrill) are both so keen to get their hands on their mother's fortune that killing her off is a 'no problem' solution. Being super-rich is not enough for these spoilt brats, who are also insane of course (in addition to being insane with greed, which is their normal social condition), they have to be super-super-rich. (It is the extra 'super', like one more stripe on a sergeant's sleeve, that matters to them.) The film takes for granted that one would kill one's mother for a few more hundred million, rather than wait for her to die first, as instant gratification is so all-engrossing. Rod Taylor tries to stop all this, but so feebly that one suspects once again that the script contains stray pages from another story. It is a pointless tale, and makes pointless viewing.

This film is promoted as a Hitchcock-style thriller but it pales when compared with Hitchcock's classics such as Strangers on a Train and Dial "M" for Murder. With the main characters being fabulously rich and so being able to buy private jets and magnificent houses at the drop of a hat, the film has the air of a TV movie rather than a cinema offering.

Ted and Laura (Rod Taylor and Dina Merrill) are a retired couple who buy a lighthouse with underground living space when they see it featured on TV. Their son, Mark (Rick Johnson) is none to pleased about this as he sees his inheritance slipping away despite being wealthy himself. This is where the Hitchcockian aspect comes into play as Mark plans a two-pronged attack to get his hands on his mother's money, first by legal means and then by the sexy slinky femme fatale. The end of the film is a bit ambiguous and the supernatural dream clip at the end is pure corn.

Rod Taylor and Dina Merril are old hands at this sort of thing and Rick Johnson is suitably nasty as the darkly avaricious son. The best performance is by Rebecca Broussard who oozes sensuality as the sexy psycho nurse Monet. There are moments of tension but it is not a film that will have you on the edge if your seat, so only 4 stars.