A Tattered Web

This film is a low budget drama which is chiefly remarkable for containing one of Broderick Crawford's finest performances, as a befuddled drunk who has murdered his best friend but doesn't remember doing so, and an intense and convincing performance by Lloyd Bridges (father of Jeff and Beau). Bridges plays Police Sergeant Ed Stagg who is obsessively devoted to protecting his grown daughter, whom he raised alone after her mother ran off. He discovers that his daughter's husband is having an affair, and he orders him to stop it. Things get out of hand and someone ends up dead by accident, but dead is dead, and a cover-up is necessary. So we get involved in a whodunnit where the who is concealed, and will this all unravel? Bridges is rather terrifying in his obsessive love for the dreamy and over-protected daughter, and the extremes to which he will go. He reveals terrible things about his own childhood as the story progresses. It is an engrossing film.