User Reviews

I don't know why this hasn't been issued on DVD. It's so much better than most of the rubbish now being pumped out in major motion pictures. The ax murders that took place in Fall River, Massachussetts in 1892, were among the most notorious in American history. Can't really understand why. A couple of blows to the head with an ax and you have two dead bodies. The viewer doesn't even get to see an Uzi. I suppose the fact that Lizzie Borden was brought to trial for the killings had something to do with it -- Lizzie being a woman, subject to hanging, possibly a patricide. She was acquitted, inherited with her sister Emma what was left of the family fortune (after legal expenses), and lived a secluded life in a more comfortable home in a more comfortable Fall River neighborhood. The morbid and the curious, or the simply morbidly curious, can not only visit the original Borden home but can rent one of the rooms, since the place is now a privately owned bed-and-breakfast. If the breakfast is curried mutton broth, avoid it.

The movie tells the story in a dark, straightforward fashion, much of it covering Lizzie's trial. As Lizzie, Elizabeth Montgomery is quite good. A few angry or hysterical outbursts aside, she's portrayed as a pretty cold fish. Community opinion turned against her because she didn't wear black and showed no grief during the inquest or funeral. (I wonder if Albert Camus was familiar with this story.) The rest of the performances are equally laudable. Richard Dysart is a fine prosecutor. Fionulla Flanagan, as Bridget Sullivan, the maid, has a minor role but presents a startling image with her wide, sympathetic eyes.

The film has two subtexts, based on much conjecture and even more deliberately fictional private conversations. One is that men don't understand women's burdens. (Dysart complains to his wife that Lizzie is hiding behind her skirts, although if she was, it managed to slip by me. "Next thing, they'll be wanting the vote," he tells her.) The second subtext is that Lizzie did the whole thing, and the film spells out exactly how she could have pulled it off, and why.

Part of what I find appealing about the movie is its period detail. It's supposed to be hot, and it LOOKS hot. Everyone seems to be sweating under the necessity of wearing all those layers of clothing. When the women go to bed they wear bonnets and nightgowns that button all the way up to the chin. Lizzie's alibi is that during the killings she was out in the barn looking for sinkers and eating pears. Now, how quotidian can you get? Looking for sinkers. (She planned to go fishing.)

Fritz Weaver as Father Borden, ex undertaker and major skinflint is simply great. As an actor he's usually under-rated. The movie isn't very kind to his character. If there were a book in his house besides the Bible it would be the collected sermons of John Calvin. As a child (we are supposed to believe) Lizzie peeped in on him while he was feeling up one of the corpses in his undertaking establishment. Later, there are suggestions of incest. This, together with his stinginess, I suppose is to make us sympathize with the downtrodden and finally murderous Lizzie. It doesn't do it for me. The necrophilia and incest are fictional. There's not a hint of it in the historical record.

What we DO know is that the old man was a cheapskate and insisted, despite his million dollars, in living in an old house with tiny rooms and an indoor latrine, and denying his daughters the fancier dresses they craved. (It's not in the movie but his last recorded public act was picking up a discarded padlock with no key, examining it to see if it might be put to use, and pocketing it. "Waste not, want not!", he cries.) And we know that Borden's wife -- Lizzy's and Emma's stepmother -- stood in the way of that inheritance.

Cui bono?, ask the lawyers. Lizzy and Emma, that's who. We don't really need the feminism layered on.

The direction by Paul Wendkos isn't exceptional but he's a competent professional. The score is sarcastically melodious ragtime with at one point, I swear, a statement of Kane's theme from "Citizen Kane." A generally nice job by just about everyone concerned.

I wasn't expecting much the first time I saw this made for TV film. Most were, and still are, unfortunately, pretty substandard in cinematic terms. Even in this one, the budget must have been very small, and it has low-budget, "make do" feel to it.

However, the performances are so first-rate that you quickly forget that this is a TV movie. The actors get so deeply into their characters that you can almost believe that you are watching a newsreel, rather than a fictionalized version of the Lizzie Borden story. Actually, the first time I saw this movie was on Spanish-language television,dubbed into Spanish, and although my Spanish language skills are far from perfect, the story and the performances transcended any language barriers, even those of having different actors provide the voices. I couldn't wait to see it in the original, and I wasn't disappointed. Elizabeth Montgomery is a pretty scary Lizzie Borden, and even though the evidence in the film points to her being guilty, you are still never sure that what you see in flashbacks is what really happened, or simply Lizzie's distorted fantasy of the events. This is a literate, well-executed and haunting film, one that I always mention as one of my favorites, and one I urge my friends to look for in re-broadcasts. It will have you discussing the case for weeks after you see it.

Despite playing fast and free with the facts of the case of Lizzie Borden it is still a very effective film. Although not exactly in the horror genre it oftentimes has that vibe. It is very creepy. I saw this back in the 70's and it became an immediate favourite. As someone who consumed anything remotely scary or horror related this film fit the bill perfectly. Apart from the nursery rhyme about Lizzie giving forty whacks to her mother (step mother actually), then, seeing what she had done, gave her father forty-one. Not historically accurate but it created the legend which has endured until today. It is among the great unsolved murders. The film goes that extra mile to show that she was the killer, although actual evidence was circumstantial and implicated no one suspect. The director does a nice job recreating that time period and the circumstances which might have led Lizzie to commit these crimes. Her father was not very free with his money and lived in conditions that were out of step with the surrounding town of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Lizzie and her sister Emma stood to inherit a substantial amount of money when her father died, but would have also been split between the sisters and the step mother. But once both were killed there was only the sisters to profit. This might have been the motive behind the crime. As soon as she came into that inheritance Lizzie immediately moved into a more modern house, but she was never welcomed into the town's higher society. She was assumed guilty by some, but a jury acquitted her for any credible evidence. My own theory is that if she not directly involved she was a participant.

Fun fact: Elizabeth Montgomery is a distant relative to Lizzie. She found this out while making the film or shortly afterwards. Creepy.

I call it "The curse of the Montgomerys". Robert Montgomery was a fantastically gifted actor and (to a lesser extent) director and producer, but while recognized by his peers as such he was never given the ultimate accolades of Hollywood - top rank stardom and an Oscar (preferably for his marvelous performance as "Danny" in NIGHT MUST FALL). After 1951 he called his movie career quits and went into television, where he did very well with his anthology series ROBERT MONTGOMERY PRESENTS, and finally did get some award recognition in the form of an "Emmy". But his show has been out of syndication for decades, and there is no way for current audiences to judge his work. This is sad because Montgomery attempted, in his series, to lift television out of the rut he saw it falling into, and that he later condemned in writing.

Montgomery died in 1981. By that time he was gratified (one hopes) by the success of his daughter Elizabeth, who achieved television stardom as "Samantha Stevens", the central witch on the comedy BEWITCHED. But like others in television, Liz Montgomery never could escape the great success of her role, nor could she make the jump (which given her lovely figure and face she could have made) into films. She made a few movies, but none were strong enough to make her a star (not even on the level of her father). She would, however, be successful in choosing good television properties to do until the time of her own death in 1996.

Hence the "curse of the Montgomerys". Both very good talents - and never able to get into that really upper echelon they should have reached.

One of the films Liz chose to make was this 1975 reconstruction of the Fall River Axe Murders of August 1892 - the murders that are forever linked to another "Liz": Elizabeth "Lizzie" Borden. Briefly, Lizzie Borden lived with an older sister (Emma), her father Andrew Borden, and a stepmother (Abby Borden) in a house in Fall River, Massachusetts. Andrew was originally an undertaker, but he parlayed his cash and shrewdness into a large fortune (for that day). Unfortunately he was an absolute tightwad, forcing his daughters to take care of their own clothing when they could have had their own maids, and he was rather tyrannical about them serving him and his wife, the unloved Abby. The only other person who resided in the house was the household maid, Bridget O'Sullivan.

There was a food poisoning event a few weeks before the final catastrophe, but given the standards for poor food in the 19th Century this by itself means little. Then, on an August afternoon, Andrew was found hacked to death while napping on a couch in the parlor, and Abby similarly found hacked up on the floor of an upstairs bedroom. Emma had an alibi, as did a visiting uncle. Only Lizzie and Bridget were in the house, and neither claimed they heard anything unusual (although Bridget thought she heard a laugh at the top of the stairs when Andrew came home from his office). Due to Lizzie burning an old stained dress the police narrowed their suspicions on her. She was arrested, and the trial for the murders took place in 1893.

To this day, most Americans who hear the "Lizzie Borden took an ax" quatrain think she did it. She most probably did. But Lizzie was acquitted. The general reason given is that there was a lack of any desire by the all male jury to hang a gentlewoman. Whatever the reason, the case is still officially unsolved. If you would like to consider Bridget (under extreme stress from her employers doing her chores in that blazing August weather) cracking and doing them in you can consider it. There have been other theories avoiding Lizzie or Brigid, including Emma or her Uncle Morse getting involved, or a passing tramp, or even Andrew's discarded illegitimate son doing it.

Montgomery played Lizzie with dignity and guts, and (SPOILER COMING UP) knowledge that she was guilty. The concluding of the film showed her doing in first Abby and then waiting, naked, for Andrew to show up. It was a terrifically ice-cold performance in that part.

Of note too was the always dependable Fritz Weaver as Andrew and Katherine Helmond as Emma (not quite sure what to think). Don Porter played former Massachusetts Governor George Robinson, who skillfully navigated his client to acquittal. And that ultimately tragic actor, Ed Flanders played the district attorney, who is under intense pressure not to win this one if he can avoid it. It was a very well done piece of Americana, and again makes one regret that Montgomery could only get so far with her talent.