I watched this movie when it first aired and for some reason have never forgotten it.
Five holocaust survivors, all women, learn or suspect that the doctor (Rip Torn) who tormented them in the camp is now running a restaurant under an assumed name.
They disagree over his identity. Mostly it is Valerie Harper who holds out on if it is him or not and what they should do about it, mainly letting it go, but the other women, especially Swit, seem bent on pursuing it.
When she suspects he isn't the villain, Swit ends up falling in love with him and having a relationship. Balderdash, yes.
Then in the same evening of of their little tryst, she learns the truth: he IS the Nazi tormentor.
She strikes him in self defense, and he dies.
She plays innocent as the other women learn of the death the next day and that someone has been arrested for the murder!
The women realize one of them is the killer, not the man accused, so they hatch a plan for the true killer to write out what all happened, and they would all memorize the details of the apartment and the crime scene, then confess, each and everyone of them.
Again, Harper is the holdout.
Upon reading the confession, one of the women would realize who the true killer was.
So no matter how much the investigating detectives try to trip up Walters or Barrie about such minimal details like drinking glasses or a bar of soap, they know the intimate facts, as tho they were there.
Weak in plot, the biggest upset to what all was going on comes from Harper. She is much more effective during her "confession" than all the spell-binding on what . . . . . really happened.
Not having seen Sophie's Choice by the time I watched this, the scene of one of the young girls (I think it was Swit's character, but she was played by a younger different actress, obviously) is trembling in the camp as the doctor is nearby. Truthfully, the young girls story would have been more interesting, I do believe, than the murder mystery.
In connecting ages, for the women to be young girls during the holocaust, say the early to mid-forties, Loretta Swit would be 8 at the end of the war, far too young for the girl in the flashback, Jessica Walter was 5 at the war's end, Barbara Barrie was 14, Sandy Dennis was 8 and Valerie Harper was 5.
Other than Barrie, I guess they were supposed to be older.
Hardly a grand mystery, that's for sure. No doubt it would be easy to solve. I didn't solve it, but I kept getting the feeling that what was going on clearly wasn't the way it was being shown.
Good for watching only once.
Five holocaust survivors, all women, learn or suspect that the doctor (Rip Torn) who tormented them in the camp is now running a restaurant under an assumed name.
They disagree over his identity. Mostly it is Valerie Harper who holds out on if it is him or not and what they should do about it, mainly letting it go, but the other women, especially Swit, seem bent on pursuing it.
When she suspects he isn't the villain, Swit ends up falling in love with him and having a relationship. Balderdash, yes.
Then in the same evening of of their little tryst, she learns the truth: he IS the Nazi tormentor.
She strikes him in self defense, and he dies.
She plays innocent as the other women learn of the death the next day and that someone has been arrested for the murder!
The women realize one of them is the killer, not the man accused, so they hatch a plan for the true killer to write out what all happened, and they would all memorize the details of the apartment and the crime scene, then confess, each and everyone of them.
Again, Harper is the holdout.
Upon reading the confession, one of the women would realize who the true killer was.
So no matter how much the investigating detectives try to trip up Walters or Barrie about such minimal details like drinking glasses or a bar of soap, they know the intimate facts, as tho they were there.
Weak in plot, the biggest upset to what all was going on comes from Harper. She is much more effective during her "confession" than all the spell-binding on what . . . . . really happened.
Not having seen Sophie's Choice by the time I watched this, the scene of one of the young girls (I think it was Swit's character, but she was played by a younger different actress, obviously) is trembling in the camp as the doctor is nearby. Truthfully, the young girls story would have been more interesting, I do believe, than the murder mystery.
In connecting ages, for the women to be young girls during the holocaust, say the early to mid-forties, Loretta Swit would be 8 at the end of the war, far too young for the girl in the flashback, Jessica Walter was 5 at the war's end, Barbara Barrie was 14, Sandy Dennis was 8 and Valerie Harper was 5.
Other than Barrie, I guess they were supposed to be older.
Hardly a grand mystery, that's for sure. No doubt it would be easy to solve. I didn't solve it, but I kept getting the feeling that what was going on clearly wasn't the way it was being shown.
Good for watching only once.