Guest
(Optional subtitles) The 1970s were the golden age of TV movies and this is one of the best, not only for the 1970s but for any decade. It features the star of 1960s TV comedy series ‘Bewitched’, Elizabeth Montgomery, in a largely accurate dramatisation of the Borden murders, one of America’s most grisly murder cases. It became the most talked-about TV movie ever. The plot: in 1890s New England, a browbeaten daughter is accused of hacking to death her creepy patriarchal father and her mean stepmother. The resultant trial whips up the town, with the public split down the middle about whether or not she did it. Much more attractive than the real-life killer, Montgomery plays her as stubborn, vain, calculating, callous and yet strangely vulnerable. It’s a remarkable performance, as memorable as the film’s evocation of time and place. Take the rancid, week-old mutton broth that her father insists the family have for breakfast: it will turn your stomach still. Despite the passage of 50 years leavenin
