A Tattered Web

Gosh, Frank Converse was such a hunk. Wish I'd seen him do Streetcar Named Desire.

In A Tattered Web, he's 33, playing the cheating husband of Sallie Shockley and son-in-law of Lloyd Bridges in a tv movie directed by Paul Wendkos.

Bridges is Sergeant Ed Stagg who's been following Steve (Converse) to a girlfriend's (Anne Helm). Fiercely protective of his daughter to the point of obsession, Stagg confronts the woman, and during an altercation, accidentally kills her.

He can't have Steve accused, so he focuses on an old drunk (Broderick Crawford) who has already been arrested for murder and tries to convince him that he killed her.

The big problem here is that Stagg acts so guilty his colleagues become suspicious, especially when a sketch in the newspaper looks so much like Steve. He begins to unravel, remembering his drunken father and how he nearly killed him.

Steve, meanwhile, knows he's innocent and wants to come clean with his wife and the police. To Stagg, these are not admirable qualities.

Bridges unravels very well, and Converse is convincing. Broderick is excellent, very sympathetic. Shockley doesn't have much to do, but one certainly feels sorry for her going forward. Her dad's losing it.

Sgt. Ed Stagg (Lloyd Bridges) is a tough cop who has a son-in-law who is cheating on his wife (the sergeant's daughter). When Stagg finds out about it, he goes to see the mistress to scare her into abandoning the man. But things get out of hand and soon Ed knocks the lady across the room...and she dies.

When the body is discovered, Ed and his partner are the detectives called to investigate. Now it's not surprising that Ed would protect himself from being a suspect, but oddly he also shields his son-in-law, as although he hates the guy he doesn't want to see his daughter hurt. But there's a problem...witnesses have seen the son-in-law with the dead woman and he's a prime suspect. So, Ed has to find someone to pin this murder on in order to make the case go away. It all seems too easy...but it isn't.

I generally liked this movie as well as the creepy close relationship between Ed and his daughter. However, all this good is undone a bit at the end, as the ending is poorly handled and even a bit silly. Not a bad made for TV movie....but the ending left me feeling disappointed.

While this is not "Crime and Punishment," it's still kind of a neat story. Lloyd Bridges plays an LA cop with a sterling reputation, but he is carrying around lots of baggage. He is so overprotective of his daughter because he has been hurt so many times himself. In order to continue that protection, he horns in on an affair his son in law is having with a young woman. While threatening this woman, he inadvertently kills her. The rest of the movie involves his efforts to cover things up and draw attention away from his daughter's husband. There is a tug based on Bridges' hypocrisy in that he has hated his son-in-law from day one, just for being his son-in-law. The plot stands up pretty well. The police are dupes in all this because of the outstanding record of the sergeant. The one character that really doesn't do very well is the daughter. She comes across pretty dull and doesn't have any hard edge at all. Late in the movie, when another police detective is trying to talk to her, she does her own version of the "if I just hold my hands over my ears I won't hear anything bad" routine. No wonder the guy went to another woman. As I said, there's a lot of angst, some decent acting, some not so decent, but it will hold one's attention for an hour and a half.

The adage implies the reverse, or that crime cost or must be repaid. "A Tattered Web" is a good film with a message, and some good acting Lloyd Bridges as Police Sgt. Ed Stagg, Frank Converse as his son-in-law and fellow police officer, Steve Butler, are particularly good. And Murray Hamilton as Sgt. Joe Marcus, Ed's partner, is quite good.

The movie involves an accidental killing, adultery, an effort by Stagg to cover up the real truth and his role, a very dysfunctional past family life, and a dark past killing that was never reported but still weighs on Stagg's mind. Will justice be served in the end, and if so, how?

A subtle message of this film, that may not be so apparent with the specific case and situations, is the old adage that "crime doesn't pay." But more specifically, as this plot bears out is that no one can avoid a slippery slope when living lies.

Tattered Web, A (1971)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Silly but entertaining made-for-TV thriller has Lloyd Bridges playing Sgt. Ed Stagg. He learns that his son-in-law (Frank Converse) has been having an affair so he goes to the woman to make her put an end to the affair. Stagg accidentally kills her so he must protect himself but also try to keep the police from finding out who her boyfriend was. I've come to expect a certain amount of silliness when it comes to these made-for-TV flicks from the 70s. It really doesn't matter what they're about but the majority of them are entertaining but also very campy. That's pretty much the case here as we get a pretty good story but it's mixed in with some very dumb moments. One of the biggest killers of this type of film are how over dramatic they can be and this here usually happens right before we go to commercial as the music blares and we get a silly zoom shot towards the guilty person. We get quite a bit of that here but we also get some very silly moments including the scenes at the start when Bridges busts into the woman's house and just keeps insulting her and calling her a tramp. I couldn't help but laugh at this as well as some of the more sillier moments including a priceless sequence where Bridges is trying to protect his daughter yet he never realizes that he's just putting a burden on her. The entire "protecting the daughter" is driven into the ground here as we get countless dialogue scenes with Bridges expressing his love for his daughter, which is fine but at times they are way too cute and over the top. With that said, the story itself is a pretty interesting one and I thought it was also rather clever as we had Bridges trying to do two things at once. I think it goes against his character that he'd do so many wrong things to try and clear everything up. As for the actor, he's great fun to watch here as he really gives it his all and keeps the film moving from start to finish. We also get a great supporting cast that includes Murray Hamilton, Broderick Crawford, Val Avery, Whit Bissell, John Fielder and Anne Helm as the other woman. The daughter in the film has to be one of the dumbest characters in the history of film as you'd think you were watching a 2-year-old. She can never figure things out and is constantly coming off either stupid or just downright ignorant and one can't help but grow frustrated with her. If you're a fan of the genre then this here is pretty much a must-see.