To get away from her estranged husband Eddie (Larry Hagman), Liza
(Barbara Eden) returns to her hometown in the country to stay with her dad
and stepmom Rose (Vera Miles) for a while - but while Rose welcomes her
with open arms, daddy's mysteriously gone, instead Liza meets her
stepbrother Justin (John Rubinstein) she has learned about only recently.
Furthermore, nobody in town, not even her friends from back in the day,
wants to talk to Liza. Rose tells her because her dad had to close up the
mine which employed half the city, and while dad came out of it
financially unscathed, pretty much everyone else fell on hard times. Liza
thinks there's something more, though, and it has to do with ... a stray
dog. Following the stray dog, Liza finds some bones dug in somewhere in
the woods - but when the police has them dug up, they are said to be only
deer bones ... which Liza finds hard to believe, and eventually she learns
the story of an alleged child killer who was lynched by the townfolks,
only to later be found innocent - a story nobody in town wants to talk
about anymore. Eventually, Liza learns the whole dark secret: Turns out
Justin is not Rose's son at all but her young lover, and the two of them
have killed Liza's dad - but one of the local children witnessed the
crime, so they killed her, too, then put the blame on a traveling
salesman, the guy who got lynched. Once she has found out though, Justin
arrives on the scene ready to kill her as well - but Rose's conscience
kicks in and she shoots Justin to save Liza's life. Oh yeah, and while
all this has happened, Liza's husband has turned up as well, as made
numerous attempts to win her back, and has arrived on scene almost in time
to save her before Rose did - only almost though. Anyways, in the end the
two of them get back together. The main attraction of this
made-for-TV thriller back in the day was of course that it reunited the
stars of I
Dream of Jeannie Barbara Eden shortly after the demise of that
series in roles not resembling Jeannie and Major Nelson one bit - and both
do a pretty good job in their roles, admittedly ... even though Larry
Hagman's character somehow lacks narrative necessity. The film as a whole
though is pretty routine, a soullessly directed and boringly filmed piece
of genre entertainment that could have vastly profited from a better
script - and all of this is a shame, because the story as such shows tons
of potential and could have been turned into a cult classic if more focus
was put on the absurd aspects of the story and if its horror angle was
emphasized. Instead we are left with a routine
genre movie, no worse than many others of its ilk of course - but no
better as well ...
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