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Absolutely Brilliant!

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Those words didn't come from Ed Stagg's (Lloyd Bridges) daughter, or even his dysfunctional son-in-law. It was the Sarge himself trying to convince Broderick Crawford's derelict drunk to take the fall for the accidental death of Louise Campbell (Anne Helm).Here's an idea - how about tracing the call made to the police station from Campbell's apartment at the time she was killed? Didn't anybody think of putting THAT two and two together? And with twenty five years on the force, the person on the phone at the station didn't recognize Stagg's voice?Maybe Broderick Crawford should have been in charge of this case like he was in the prior year's TV flick, "Ransom Money". On second thought, that one didn't turn out so well either. That might have been the one that drove him to drink.

A corrupt police sergeant who is perversely attached to his imbecilic daughter oversteps boundaries with impunity until he makes one fatal mistake.This 1971 melodrama is dated and overacted but is quite entertaining for just those reasons. (However, it does end a bit too lamely in a conventional twist that reminds one of how cynical movies have become...) I hadn't seen Lloyd Bridges since "Sea Hunt" and enjoyed him in this hysterical bad-guy role. Not at all a bad film to watch at home alone on a non-descript weeknight.

This film is a low budget drama which is chiefly remarkable for containing one of Broderick Crawford's finest performances, as a befuddled drunk who has murdered his best friend but doesn't remember doing so, and an intense and convincing performance by Lloyd Bridges (father of Jeff and Beau). Bridges plays Police Sergeant Ed Stagg who is obsessively devoted to protecting his grown daughter, whom he raised alone after her mother ran off. He discovers that his daughter's husband is having an affair, and he orders him to stop it. Things get out of hand and someone ends up dead by accident, but dead is dead, and a cover-up is necessary. So we get involved in a whodunnit where the who is concealed, and will this all unravel? Bridges is rather terrifying in his obsessive love for the dreamy and over-protected daughter, and the extremes to which he will go. He reveals terrible things about his own childhood as the story progresses. It is an engrossing film.

Finding his son-in-law Steve Butler, Frank Converse, cheating on his daughter Tina, Sallie Shockly, brought the worst out of LAPD Sgt. Ed Stagg, Llyod Bridges. Following his son-in-law at the beach strolling with his secret love Louise Campball, Anne Helm, and later camping outside of Louises apartment in the city Sgt. Stagg give her a call telling her not to have anything to do with him or else.Back home Steve is everything that Tina could want a loving husband caring and sensitive to her needs with the only exception to a perfect marriage is of him being late most nights when he's together with Louise. Sgt. Stagg for his part has a dark and secret past that goes back to when he was a teenager by having an abusive father who constantly beat him and his mother. One night when Ed was 15 he tried to stop his father for beating his mom ending up clubbing him to death with a hammer. Shocked at what he did and even more upset that his mom, who he thought he was helping, threw a fit at him which caused Ed to run away from home. Ed's mom never reported what he did to the police and his father death was ruled an unsolved murder. Even his married life was a disaster for Ed Stagg with his wife leaving him and his, at the time, ten year daughter Tina. It was after that that Sgt. Stagg took it upon himself to see that Tina would never go through what he did as a son and husband. When his threats to Louise didn't have any effect to have her split up with Steve Sgt. Stagg showed up at her apartment, just after Steve left. Sgt. Stagg trying to get her to break up with Steve knocked Louise against the wall that ended up killing her. In a state of shock Sgt. Stagg realizing what he did tries to hide all the evidence that would connect him with Louises death but unknowingly leaves a glass that he used to revive the dying Louise on the coffee table in full view of the police who later came to investigate her death. Sgt. Stagg is so well thought off by his fellow colleagues at the LAPD that his friend Sgt. Marcus, Murray Hamilton,who's on the Louise Campball case assumed that he accidentally touched the glass leaving his fingerprints on it not realizing that it in fact was Sgt. Stagg who killed her. It was bad enough that Sgt. Stagg killed Louise and covered it up but he later goes one step down the road to destruction when in an effort to tie up all the loose ends together on Louises death he tries to frame a poor homeless derelict Willard Edson, Broderick Crawford, who had confessed to killing his friend in a drunken rage to also confess to killing Louise. Llyod Bidges as the tortured soul Sgt. Ed Stagg is at his best with an in-dept performance of a man truly at the end of his rope with his life falling apart because of his misguided actions to save his daughter marriage. Holding back his true feelings about Steve and what he did to break up his affair with Louise drives poor Sgt. Stagg to the brink of insanity and suicide.Frank Converse as the cheating husband Steve Butler showed that he was indeed a decent man and good husband when he tried to brake up with Louise, not knowing that she was dead. When he found out that Willard Edson, who Steve knew was innocent, was arrested for her death Steve went out of his way to save him from a trip to the gas chamber. Steve was more then ready to do that even if his secret life, with Louise, is uncovered to Tina by doing it. Then there's Murray Hamilton as Sgt. Marcus who's the big surprise in the movie as the troubled and hard nosed cop and best friend of Sgt.Stagg. Sgt. Marcus is forced to accept the fact that his best friend and fellow LAPD officer is no better then the criminals that he deals with every day and night on the mean streets of L.A.