SnoopyStyle Insurance salesman Walter Neff (Richard Crenna) is hurt and returns to his office to record a confession. The movie recounts his story. His boss at Pacific Casualty, Barton Keyes (Lee J. Cobb), is an expert at uncovering fraud. Walter does a home visit to Dietrichson. He's not home but his alluring wife Phyllis (Samantha Eggar) is there to meet him. She suggests buying accident insurance for her husband without telling him. Walter accuses her of planning to kill her husband. She tracks Walter to his home and he helps plan the perfect scheme. He secretly sells her husband an accident insurance policy and insists on killing him on a train to collect the double indemnity of $400k.This is an unnecessary remake and not a good one. There is no particular style other than 70's TV. It is bare bones. Richard Crenna is a little old and not enough. Samantha Eggar is a beautiful woman but her clothing does not accentuates her femme fatale. Everything is somewhat bland which questions the purpose of this remake. On the other hand, Lee J. Cobb is great but it's not enough.

charlytully I have it on good authority that James M. Cain turned over in his grave when this haphazard rendering of his novella DOUBLE INDEMNITY emanated from the boob tube in the early 1970s. (Seriously, he was 81, and kicked the bucket four years later.) Be that as it may, if you watch both the original and a remake from decades later for the first time because the film studio is making more money on a deluxe DVD set than it would by packaging the original alone, it usually turns out to be a case of a defendant providing the rope with which they should be hoisted up, figuratively speaking. Crass Universal Studios took an earlier effort nominated for seven Oscars, which largely created the genre of film noir, and de-noired it in a sloppy adaptation they probably hoped people would skip to focus on the commercials. Almost every character name and line from the original was retained, no matter how anachronistic. But most of the TV cast is so third-rate that when they change the name of Lola's boyfriend from Nino Zachetti (beyond their powers of pronunciation) to Donny Franklin, airhead Kathleen Cody (as Lola) calls him "Johnny" when he's first introduced. Key lines of dialog are chopped in half, to fit in more TV ads. And Billy Goldenberg's musical score would be more suitable for a situation comedy. Even if this were the first adaptation of Cain's story, it would not come within a hundred miles of an Emmy nomination.

santafesheriff ATMOSPHERIC THRILLER directed by Jack Smight exceeds the 1944 original. Richard Crenna mantains his reputation as a major 60s/70s leading actor teamed with the excellent Samantha Eggar in this vastly superior remake of the 1944 "classic film noir" that had an inferior team of Fred McMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. Being a well made, tightly budgeted Television movie this 1973 thriller is beautifully written, plotted and acted, giving full value for money in each scene. Richard Crenna is totally head and shoulders above the fumbling and uncertain Fred McMurray and Samantha Eggar adds real style, glamour and sexiness in her role. Absolutely recommended in all departments this is yet another TV Movie that is hugely well made and exceeds the efforts of a cinema release.

classicalsteve When Samantha Eggar (as Phyllis Dietrickson) answers the door of her house swathed in a towel, you realize that as competent an actress as Eggar may be, she doesn't have the hypnotic allure of Barbara Stanwyck. And it is not entirely Eggar's fault. In the original film, Wilder had Stanwyck not only appear in a towel, but she enters the scene on the second floor balcony of the house. And she doesn't "come out"; she appears, almost as if by magic. Walter Neff is staring up at her from below on the first floor. There is a reason for this. Stanwyck is much higher than Neff (Fred MacMurray) when they are first introduced. It is not just the towel. The towel adds to the seductive allure. Her pose is like a Greek Goddess overlooking her domain, and, in a strange way, you feel as if, from the start, she is actually controlling the entire situation. She has sexual, even magic, power. This person is no ordinary housewife. This person is a mystery with secrets hidden within.Back to 1973. The remake has Crenna knock on the front door. Stanwyck's stand-in, Eggar, answers the door with a towel around her. There is no "appearance". She simply opens the door. The alluring superiority that grabs the audience at the first appearance of Stanwyck in 1944 is entirely absent in 1973. She opens the door with a towel around her. It may be sexy in a Charlie's Angels sort of way, but it's not nearly as mysterious. The filmmakers of the remake seem to misunderstand Wilder's point. The script may have said "Phyllis appears in towel" so the filmmakers of the remake simply follow the instructions and include the required towel. The point is not the towel. The point is the enigmatic quality of Phyllis, and the potential power she wields. Wilder gave her a towel to add to her mystique. The filmmakers of the remake gave her a towel because that's what Wilder did. And in the choice of shot, lost all of Phyllis' mystique.Richard Crenna also seems miscast. He seems like he's "acting" and not really in the midst of the dilemma. Part of the problem is Crenna appears so much like a 70's actor. He can't get into the 1940's. When MacMurray first speaks into the microphone, sweat begins to drip from his face. No sweat on Crenna. And they also changed one of the crucial lines at the beginning. In the original, Neff says, "I didn't get the money, and I didn't get the woman." In the 1973 version, Crenna says, "I didn't get the money, and I didn't want the woman." Did the filmmakers completely misunderstand the entire point of the story? Or were they dumbing it down for a "television" audience?This made-for-TV movie is a by-the-numbers rendition. All the sharp edge of the original is lost. The only stand-out, maybe, is Lee J. Cobb in the role made famous by Edward G. Robinson. But he cannot save the loss of intensity of the original. This 1973 boring remake is a forgettable TV-movie made probably by the same people who did "Gilligan's Island". They might as well have tried to remake "Citizen Kane" or "Gone with the Wind". If mediocrity is the best one can hope for, what's the point? The 1944 classic is a Film with a capital "F". This made-for-TV remake deserves an "F" grade, or, maybe a "D" for dumb.