Those are the three elements that keep this TV movie going then and now. Glenn Ford is great, Paul Wendkos direction is typically controlled and wild at the same time, Jerry Goldsmith writes scary and ironic music for the smug and dangerous secret society, and the script by a long time TV scribe is really fantastic. It manages to hit all the bases including how a true victim of a secret group becomes an even greater victim when he goes public and has every nut in town go after him or even worse claim to be on his side. This is the kind of "true" tough writing that television for all its nudity and profanity since has lost. This is a thriller with thrills but credibility and something to say. Those are rare in any medium.
A belief in secret societies and the like has become almost a conspiracy unto itself in the time since this film was shown, but despite all that cultish interest in conspiracy theories that in itself can be a way to find excuses for the way things are, this movie still works because it seems totally believable on every level.
Certainly one of the best television movies from that great era of television movies, and theatrical films as well. Ah how we should all miss the 1970s as far as filmed entertainment was concerned. This film ages really well. Many of these are lost to DVD regardless of their subject matter, as some other reviewers suggest and conspiracy to keep this movie from view, it's more a matter of dissolved television production companies and partial copyright laws that keep them from getting released, but if the demand grows hopefully this and other television movies will get remastered as they deserve to be. Put this on that list to be among the first released.
A belief in secret societies and the like has become almost a conspiracy unto itself in the time since this film was shown, but despite all that cultish interest in conspiracy theories that in itself can be a way to find excuses for the way things are, this movie still works because it seems totally believable on every level.
Certainly one of the best television movies from that great era of television movies, and theatrical films as well. Ah how we should all miss the 1970s as far as filmed entertainment was concerned. This film ages really well. Many of these are lost to DVD regardless of their subject matter, as some other reviewers suggest and conspiracy to keep this movie from view, it's more a matter of dissolved television production companies and partial copyright laws that keep them from getting released, but if the demand grows hopefully this and other television movies will get remastered as they deserve to be. Put this on that list to be among the first released.