REFLECTIONS OF MURDER (1974)
TV-Movie
Article 2644 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-2-2008
Posting Date: 11-8-2008
Directed by John Badham
Featuring Tuesday Weld, Joan Hackett, Sam Waterston
Country: USA

A teacher at a private school is married to a cruel husband who has been trying to force her to sell the school for the money. The wife and the husband’s mistress hatch a plot to murder the husband so they’ll both be free from his tyranny. However, things don’t go quite as planned…

Had anybody asked me what I thought of the idea of a TV-Movie remake of DIABOLIQUE, I would not have expressed encouragement or felt excitement. I still think this TV-Movie is unnecessary, but I will admit that it does a very good job with the property; good performances from all of the cast and strong direction from John Badham all contribute to making this one work. Still, if you’ve seen the original, there’s not much in the way of surprises here, though it does have a very final twist that I don’t remember from the original movie (though this may be faulty memory on my part). It’s easy to see why John Badham would eventually graduate from TV to feature films; this movie deftly avoids the usual TV-Movie touches that tend to make me dislike them.