This is very much like a Columbo episode. Clocking in at 73 minutes, it was written by Larry Cohen, who later penned quite a few Columbo episodes. If you are a youngster and don't know who Columbo was, he was a raincoat wearing TV cop who looks at the less obvious suspect and wears them down with his "Just one more thing..." questions and his annoying quirky presence until the murderers trap themselves.
Richard Boone plays an actor, Tony Chappel, who recently went blind and is leaving some institute where he has been recovering and relearning basic skills as a blind person. He is being allowed to leave five days early and with his own full time therapist - somebody to help him continue learning how to adapt. This person is played by Suzanne Pleshette. If you have your calculator out and find this sounds all very expensive, first off Chappel was apparently a very successful actor and thus very rich, and plus healthcare costs have grown far faster than the rate of inflation this past fifty years.
On the way home Tony asks the therapist, Kate, if he can stop by his lawyer's apartment and get something without her assistance. He even knows the desk drawer. She relents. Tony actually does find his way up to the apartment and lets himself in with a key that he knows is hidden outside. Once inside, he hears his wife Elizabeth (Stella Stevens) and his lawyer in the bedroom doing bedroomy things with her talking about how exciting he is and what a drag it will be having to take care of Tony once he gets home. Tony leaves undetected but pretends to his therapist that he got lost and never got into the apartment. He immediately and secretly plans to murder his wife by shooting her and set up his attorney for the crime. But how can a blind man shoot anybody? Watch and find out.
Just like in Columbo, relationships are not deeply probed. The focus is on Tony and how he arranges everything to pull off the perfect crime. I've never seen Boone in much but "Have Gun Will Travel" and he did command my attention throughout. As an actor, Tony effectively and continually misleads everybody about both minor and major details and never lets on to his wife that everything between them is anything but perfect.
After the crime, which happens rather ironically itself, "an inspector calls" - John Marley as Lt. Bergman. Marley is rather bland in this part but he is methodical and thorough. But the important thing is from the beginning, he suspects Tony, in spite of evidence that the attorney did do it and that Tony is blind. Suzanne Pleshette, in spite of being second billed, does not have that much to do here.
I'd recommend this. But there is just one thing...never is it revealed HOW Tony became blind. Was it an accident? A disease? It is never mentioned. Also, was Tony's arrest even legal? The aftermath would have made a great episode of Law&Order. It is a very suspenseful made for TV treat and I would recommend it.
