****SPOILERS**** It what she described as being the most taxing and difficult acting role in her career Beverly Garland plays abused and brutalized wife Ellen Winslow who's deranged husband Gerald , Skip Homeier, uses every kind of underhand tactic to get her to leave him even going so far as murder. Ellen's saving grace in the film is her kind hearted as well as a bit naive, in not knowing what she's going through, boss oil man Cliff Kane, Kenneth Tobey, who suffers almost as much abuse as she does in the movie . As things soon turned out even Cliff isn't quite the "Knight in Shining Amour"" that Ellen thinks he is. Cliff in fact was a partner with Gerald, before she met him, in an oil deal that went bust and bankrupted him.
The confusion in the film is due to it's director Ned Hockman walking off the set and having the inexperienced Skip Homeier, in his first and only attempt in directing a movie, take over. This has the last half of the movie makes no sense at all as Homeier due to him directing it totally disappears from sight. As things turned out that was the best decision that Homeier ever made. The film gets so confusing in Ellen going to her husband's home town in Oklahoma to find out about his past. It's there that she ends up getting raped in the town cemetery by one of Gerald's drinking buddies Paul Scovil as Gerlad gleefully watched From a safe distance. Scovil later was set up by his "good friend" Gerald in having his gun toting wife Edna catch him together with what had to be a kidnapped Ellen in a sleazy motel room. It's a terrified Scovil who then ended up, by running for his life, crushed to death by a tractor trailer.
***SPOILERS*** As for Beverly Garland and her co-star Kenneth Tobey like the troopers that they were they stuck it out until the very end fully knowing what a turkey that they were in and made the ending a bit upbeat by doing that. In the final moments of the movie Beverly Garland's Ellen Winslow and Kenneth Tobey's Cliff Kane, who looked and acted like he was heavily sedated, take off for Mexico City to start a new life for themselves as husband & wife with psycho sadist ex-husband Gerald now literally out of the picture.
The confusion in the film is due to it's director Ned Hockman walking off the set and having the inexperienced Skip Homeier, in his first and only attempt in directing a movie, take over. This has the last half of the movie makes no sense at all as Homeier due to him directing it totally disappears from sight. As things turned out that was the best decision that Homeier ever made. The film gets so confusing in Ellen going to her husband's home town in Oklahoma to find out about his past. It's there that she ends up getting raped in the town cemetery by one of Gerald's drinking buddies Paul Scovil as Gerlad gleefully watched From a safe distance. Scovil later was set up by his "good friend" Gerald in having his gun toting wife Edna catch him together with what had to be a kidnapped Ellen in a sleazy motel room. It's a terrified Scovil who then ended up, by running for his life, crushed to death by a tractor trailer.
***SPOILERS*** As for Beverly Garland and her co-star Kenneth Tobey like the troopers that they were they stuck it out until the very end fully knowing what a turkey that they were in and made the ending a bit upbeat by doing that. In the final moments of the movie Beverly Garland's Ellen Winslow and Kenneth Tobey's Cliff Kane, who looked and acted like he was heavily sedated, take off for Mexico City to start a new life for themselves as husband & wife with psycho sadist ex-husband Gerald now literally out of the picture.