If there needed to be a remake of the 1948 movie version of the popular radio play (which starred Agnes Moorehead), it needed to be someone who could be a power force on screen like Barbara Stanwyck who got her fourth Oscar nomination for playing the grasping daddy's girl facing fear after dealing with crossed lines that revealed that a murder was being plotted. Someone like Glenn Close or Jessica Lange could have done justice, but Loni Anderson is definitely out of her element. Barbara Stanwyck must have cringed in her last year on earth hearing about this, and while Anderson gives an interesting perspective on the part, she's closer to a daytime soap siren rather than a tough cookie facing a sudden health crisis, only to find out too late that she's the intended victim.
Hal Holbrook is perfect as her powerful father, but Carl Weintraub (who?) is bland as the husband who forced his way into her life to get down the aisle, and now is in a desperate situation which has led him to contemplate murder. Diane D'Aquila plays an old friend of Anderson's caught up in the current situation. Then there's veteran actor Patrick Macnee as a mysterious stranger desperate to get ahold of Weintraub. Like the movie, the film has multiple flashbacks, but they don't work as well this time around. It certainly is watchable, but pointless, although you have to give Anderson credit for trying to get past her situation comedy glamor girl past.
Hal Holbrook is perfect as her powerful father, but Carl Weintraub (who?) is bland as the husband who forced his way into her life to get down the aisle, and now is in a desperate situation which has led him to contemplate murder. Diane D'Aquila plays an old friend of Anderson's caught up in the current situation. Then there's veteran actor Patrick Macnee as a mysterious stranger desperate to get ahold of Weintraub. Like the movie, the film has multiple flashbacks, but they don't work as well this time around. It certainly is watchable, but pointless, although you have to give Anderson credit for trying to get past her situation comedy glamor girl past.