The Victim (TV 1972)

A wealthy woman is trapped during a storm in a house with no electricity or phone. A killer has murdered her sister, stuffed the body in the basement, and is now after her.

Director:

Herschel Daugherty

Writers:

Merwin Gerard (teleplay), McNight Malmar (based on a short story by)

Stars:

Elizabeth Montgomery, Eileen Heckart, Sue Ane Langdon

Cast

Credited cast:
Elizabeth Montgomery	...	Kate Wainwright
Eileen Heckart	...	Mrs. Hawkes
Sue Ane Langdon	...	Edith Jordan
George Maharis	...	Ben Chapel
Jess Walton	...	Susan Chappel
Richard Derr	...	Highway Patrolman
Ross Elliott	...	1st Patrolman
George Jue	...	George, the butler
Joe Furlong	...	2nd Patrolman
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Michael Keller	...	Station Attendant

Storyline

A wealthy woman is trapped during a storm in a house with no electricity or phone. A killer has murdered her sister, stuffed the body in the basement, and is now after her.

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Plot Keywords:

trapped | storm | house | stranded | isolation | 

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Taglines:

The phone is not the only thing that's dead in Susan's house!

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Genres:

Crime | Mystery | Thriller | Drama

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

14 November 1972 (USA)

Also Known As:

Out of Contention

Filming Locations:

Monterey, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Universal TV

Technical Specs

Runtime:

73 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The film is set during a terrible rainstorm, but during the filming production "suffered" from near-perfect weather conditions, so 100,000 gallons of water had to be streamed through rain towers to achieve the desired effect. Ironically, a week after filming was completed, torrential rains flooded the area.

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Connections

Version of Thriller: The Storm (1962)

User Reviews

Mediocre movie-of-the-week thriller

This scared the bejesus out of me when I was 11--but then, I was 11, and back then the scary content kids saw was pretty mild. (Nobody then would have thought of taking young children to R-rated horror movies, unlike so many crappy parents now.) But finally seeing it again recently, it was disappointing how tepid it was. This was the first post-"Bewitched" project for Elizabeth Montgomery, who made some of the very finest TV movies but had an inauspicious start with this one. She plays a woman whose sister is trying to separate from her scary husband (George Maharis), and we know early on that sis has been killed by somebody....once Liz arrives at the sibling's isolated country home, a lot of cumbersome plot mechanizations pass before she realizes her sister is dead and her own life is in danger. Montgomery seems too intelligent and common-sensical to be completely at home in this stereotypical woman-in-peril scenario-- other TVM staples of the time like Donna Mills would have been more appropriate. Several of the other posters here seem to be reviewing the film based on their memories from decades ago--if I'd done the same I'd rate it highly. But having seen it again, I can safely say: Your memories seriously flatter what is just not a very good, or even entertainingly bad, movie.