And the wacky housekeeper was busy putting booze in her bubbling brew while a dead woman was hidden in the basement. This is almost a single set movie, mainly the remote country home of the dead woman and her estranged husband, now the psychological prison of the woman's sister (Elizabeth Montgomery), unaware of what has happened, and frantically trying to find her. Boozy housekeeper Eileen Heckart has been fired and refuses to leave, and when the estranged husband (George Maharis) shows up, Montgomery begins to become more suspicious of what happened before she got there.
As Montgomery's first TV movie following the end of her eight year stint as Samantha on "Bewitched", this was a shocking twist for her fans to adjust to, a role without humor and her trademark twitch, exactly what she wanted to do with her career. She would go on to play mostly dark characters in her career, and as a basically nice person, she has to go to the dark side as she becomes embroiled with worry. Very young and extremely restless, a young Jess Walton shows promise in an early part as Montgomery's sister, hardly recognizable more than a decade before she went on to a lengthy daytime soap actress career. Maharis comes in late into the film, and ironically, it's never confirmed that he's the culprit, just highly assumed. Stealing every moment, Heckart adds grizzled humor as a witchy non-witch. She'd give an Oscar winning performance the same year in "Butterflies are Free", and easily could have gotten an Emmy for this. Spooky, intense fun, definitely a nail biting viewing experience.
As Montgomery's first TV movie following the end of her eight year stint as Samantha on "Bewitched", this was a shocking twist for her fans to adjust to, a role without humor and her trademark twitch, exactly what she wanted to do with her career. She would go on to play mostly dark characters in her career, and as a basically nice person, she has to go to the dark side as she becomes embroiled with worry. Very young and extremely restless, a young Jess Walton shows promise in an early part as Montgomery's sister, hardly recognizable more than a decade before she went on to a lengthy daytime soap actress career. Maharis comes in late into the film, and ironically, it's never confirmed that he's the culprit, just highly assumed. Stealing every moment, Heckart adds grizzled humor as a witchy non-witch. She'd give an Oscar winning performance the same year in "Butterflies are Free", and easily could have gotten an Emmy for this. Spooky, intense fun, definitely a nail biting viewing experience.