Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Admirable film.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

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.

Those words didn't come from Ed Stagg's (Lloyd Bridges) daughter, or even his dysfunctional son-in-law. It was the Sarge himself trying to convince Broderick Crawford's derelict drunk to take the fall for the accidental death of Louise Campbell (Anne Helm).Here's an idea - how about tracing the call made to the police station from Campbell's apartment at the time she was killed? Didn't anybody think of putting THAT two and two together? And with twenty five years on the force, the person on the phone at the station didn't recognize Stagg's voice?Maybe Broderick Crawford should have been in charge of this case like he was in the prior year's TV flick, "Ransom Money". On second thought, that one didn't turn out so well either. That might have been the one that drove him to drink.

A corrupt police sergeant who is perversely attached to his imbecilic daughter oversteps boundaries with impunity until he makes one fatal mistake.This 1971 melodrama is dated and overacted but is quite entertaining for just those reasons. (However, it does end a bit too lamely in a conventional twist that reminds one of how cynical movies have become...) I hadn't seen Lloyd Bridges since "Sea Hunt" and enjoyed him in this hysterical bad-guy role. Not at all a bad film to watch at home alone on a non-descript weeknight.

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.