VERY worth while 74 minute diversion here, a strikingly offbeat, Neo Noir ultra low budget made for TV movie (CBS) with John Forsythe cast brilliantly against type as a philandering doctor who finds himself engaged in a cat & mouse battle of wits against the husband of his mistress. Barbara Bain from "Space: 1999" plays the woman, Richard Kiley is the husband, Wendell Burton is the junkie set up as the fall guy, Joseph Campanella is the hard-nosed police detective who seems troubled by certain loose ends, and Reta Shaw steals the show as the doctor's nurse, who is perhaps a bit too observant and inquisitive to have stayed on with this particular doctor as long as is implied.
Why? Well you see several of Forsythe's patients have died. Rather suddenly. It can all be explained very simply, but this is one of those clever scripts where nothing is quite as simple as it seems. And at a mere 74 minutes it's not much of an imposition on anyone's schedule. Sure, it was made for commercial TV in 1971 so there isn't anything *too* distasteful on camera. Viewers who predicate their enjoyment movies based on people's heads exploding might be a tad disappointed, but if you PAY ATTENTION you will be rewarded. And a repeat viewing might answer some questions about passages of dialog that slipped by on the first time through.
Definitely worth having, and a respectable enough little movie to maybe watch with mom on a rainy evening when she needs some company. Can't say that about too many murder movies.
7/10
