User reviews

This relatively obscure "ABC movie of the Week" perhaps doesn't have the most groundbreaking or innovative plot ever penned down, and neither does it feature the most technologically advanced special effects, but Herschel Daugherty's "The Victim" does guarantee one majorly important thing, and that is good old-fashioned nail-biting suspense pretty much from the beginning until the very end! If I browse around and read the other user comments for this little gem, it seems as if many people originally saw the film on television when they were young, during its premiere in 1972 and still vividly remember how they were petrified. I can definitely relate to that, as "The Victim" features all the right ingredients to induce fear and disturbance: raging thunderstorms, power failures, cut off phone lines, unidentified footsteps upstairs, distressed damsels in remote countryside mansions, creepy old housekeepers and brief glimpses of dead bodies hidden in the basement! At home, in her luxurious apartment in San Francisco, Kate is terribly worried about her sister Susan. She lives far off in the country and announced that she was going to divorce her husband Ben. When she can't reach Susan on the phone, Kate decides to drive to her house even though there's a storm raging through the area. When she arrives at the house, Susan is missing and not even the nosy neighbor/housekeeper Mrs. Hawkes knows where she is. Now, the viewer already knows that Susan lies dead in the basement and that Kate is in great danger because her killer is still in the house. The storyline is thin and the climax is predictable, but that doesn't matter all that much because the atmosphere is non-stop unsettling and the acting performances are great. "The Victim" is basically a one-woman-show, with a stellar role for Elizabeth Montgomery in the lead. She's simultaneously strong and vulnerable, and her performance here is definitely on par with the terrific "The Legend of Lizzie Borden". There are also interesting supportive roles for the naturally creepy Eileen Heckart and Sue Ann Langdon (even though the latter only has two sequences and only has to talk into a phone).

Elizabeth Montgomery (THE LEGEND OF LIZZIE BORDEN) is Kate wainwright, who goes to her sister, Susan's (Jess Walton) house, looking for her. Kate grows increasingly anxious, as time passes with no sign or word from her sister. Of course, the viewer has already been shown the terrible truth early on, but Kate must find out for herself, while not knowing that whatever happened to Susan, could very well happen to her!

This is Ms. Montgomery's show, from start to finish, and she pulls it off mightily! Other characters pop up throughout, but she carries the whole movie. THE VICTIM is another made-for-TV movie that deserves re-discovery.

Co-stars Eileen Heckart as the crabby housekeeper, Mrs. Hawkes, and George Maharis as Susan's husband, Ben Chapel...

I first saw The Victim (aka Out Of Contention) over 40 years ago when I was very young. Being a passionate fan of Bewitched since I was a child, I loved to watch anything that starred Elizabeth Montgomery. This movie was (and still is) a real treat - whether you are a fan of Miss Montgomery's work or not. Elizabeth always shines in her roles, such as her portrayal as the rape victim in A Case Of Rape and as the suspected murderess in The Legend Of Lizzie Borden. Her performance in The Victim as Kate, a terrified woman trapped in an isolated house during a storm with a killer after her, is brilliant. If you like exciting suspenseful thrillers than this is one movie that will keep you on the edge of your seat till the end. Another great performance well worth mentioning is that of Eileen Heckhart who plays the eerie and suspicious housekeeper. Unfortunately like most of Miss Montgomery's movies, The Victim is not available on DVD as far as I know and I believe that although it was released on VHS many years ago. I was lucky to have taped it when it was aired on television and so have a nice copy of this very good movie. A must see!

While the setup is good, The Victim does suffer from a predictable conclusion. Once you look at the opening credits and see a star's name, but said star doesn't show up until the last 10 minutes of the movie, you have a good feeling they might be the one causing all the mayhem. It's still got a nice, creepy rain-soaked atmosphere and anything with Eileen Heckhart and Elizabeth Montgomery sharing the screen together can't be all bad.

When the film begins, Kate (Elizabeth Montgomery) is talking to her sister, Susan, on the phone. Susan's marriage is over and Kate is concerned about her...but Susan tells her she'll be okay and Kate does not need to travel to see her. But when Kate later tries phoning again and again and cannot get through to her, she decides to drive out to Susan's home--even though they are in the midst of a terrible storm. Once there, she doesn't see her. Most of the rest of the movie consists of Kate walking about the house and property calling Susan's name. Occasionally, the weirdo housekeeper (Eileen Heckart) shows up briefly and later her husband (George Maharis) comes home, but otherwise the film is a one-lady-show with Montgomery mucking about the place. And, that is the biggest weakness of the movie. At 73 minutes, that's just too much time to fill with Montgomery doing a solo act...and the film could have benefited from being shorter. Apart from that, the film was just okay...and not among the better films from the "ABC Movie of the Week".

I saw The Victim starting Elizabeth Montgomery when I was 12 years old. I just watched it again on You Tube and really enjoyed it, 44 years later.

It's an old-fashioned woman in jeopardy suspense thriller and I wish there were more movies like this today.

Elizabeth Montgomery plays Kate, a well to do woman who is concerned about her sister Susan. Susan lives in an isolated house, sounds troubled when she talks to her sister on the phone and a terrible storm is coming. Kate calls her sister back, but the line is dead, which worries Kate. Kate decides to drive to her sister's home in the storm and arrives to find her missing. The storm is in full force, the phone's not working, the power goes out....as a 12 year old, this scared me to death. As a 56 year old, I still enjoyed it. Eileen Heckhart gives a terrific performance as the sister's creepy housekeeper and George Maharis is excellent as the missing sister's husband.

For baby boomers like myself who loved Elizabeth Montgomery on Bewitched and who adored watching The Movie of the Week (a precursor to Lifetime Movies), this one's for you. I truly wish all the old Movies of the Week would be released on DVD or at least as Amazon Prime videos. There's a real market out there among the baby boomers and most of the movies, like The Victim, are really good.

I hate to give this a mediocre review because I adore Elizabeth Montgomery and up till now I never heard of this film.

For a TV movie in 1972 it's probably acceptable suspense but watching it through 2023 eyes, it's lacking a lot of it. For most of the film, Montgomery goes downstairs to the basement, upstairs to the bedroom, into the kitchen and living room while searching for her sister Susan. After her fifth go around the house calling for Susan, you want the story to advance a little already.

While going all through the house she stops to have interactions with a grouchy, hearing impaired maid/caretaker who's just a little too possessive of the home she works in. When Montgomery tells her to leave, she defiantly tells her where to go and continues on with her cooking. Even though it was apparent she had something to do with Susan's death, I liked her.

Finally Montgomery tires of searching the house after the thousandth time and in walks in Susan's husband who's supposed to be away on business, but we all know why he stayed home. It's no secret who Susan's murderer is but it takes quite a long while for the light bulb to go off over Montgomery's head.

When she sees a cut telephone wire outside, she finally puts two and two together and flees the house in Susan's car where she discovers her body in the back of it.

Now this is where I thought the suspense would start and I expected a nice cat & mouse game to begin between Montgomery and the husband....but it doesn't happen because this is the very end of the film and there's only a minute left to go. What? Why when things are just picking up!!

I felt there should've been at least 20 more minutes of suspenseful chasing going on and the run time for this film is an unusually short 1 hour 13 minutes, so it needed those 20 minutes to be a full fledged movie.

I guess the crew just didn't want to be bothered with any more story telling and decided to wrap it up early and it hurts the film because the ending is short and too abrupt.

The performances by all were very good, it was just the overall story that I found lacking. It needed more suspense and action and less of a rain soaked Montgomery calling for Susan in every room of the house.

Worried about her sister's emotional state, Elizabeth Montgomery drives through a rainstorm to be with her sibling, only to find the woman's isolated mountain home empty--but with sister Susan's car still in the garage and her wallet and keys on her bed. Empty-headed made-for-TV thriller with only two suspects in the girl's disappearance: a belligerent housekeeper with a hearing aid who lives down the road, and Montgomery's brother-in-law, who comes in out of the raging storm with a suspicious story about traveling the back roads. Poorly-written teleplay by Merwin Gerard, adapting McKnight Malmar's short story, gets off on the wrong foot with Montgomery standing on her balcony declaring, "This is ridiculous!" She's not kidding...and it only gets worse.

If not, why? Rather a number of them were high class suspense pictures. This is one of them.

Elizabeth Montgomery plays a lady who's going visiting her sister in an isolated upland cottage after learning that the sister is planning to divorce her husband. The sister is already murdered when Elizabeth arrives but she doesn't know that. Instead, there's a prolonged eerie cat-and-mouse sequence when she's searching for her and unexpectedly finds the half deaf old maid entering. The meeting with the maid is quite unsatisfactory and awkward. Then the sister's husband turns up and it's quite clear that he's hiding something...

Not to spoil the story, the set up is great and one wish that today's television could conceive originality of this kind.

I honestly can't imagine people getting much of a thrill out of this even 50 years ago. I love old tv movies and Montgomery is fine but the script is crap. It was recycled from a decade old Boris Karloff's Thriller script so what do you expect? We have 2 suspects in this and it's pretty obvious who the guilty party is. No real mystery to be had unless you've never seen a movie in your life. It's currently on youtube and in good quality. Give it a watch is you have 73 minutes to WASTE. p.s. be prepared to hear one characters name repeated about 100 times! Sussssaaaaaaan? haha

This excellent movie starring Elizabeth Montgomery is long overdue for release in DVD form. The same can be said for her earlier, also excellent movie, A Case of Rape. I can only hope that my comments spur some enterprising soul into placing BOTH Elizabeth Montgomery movies on one DVD to be made available to her many fans. I for one believe this excellent actress's role was unfortunately stereotyped by her role on Bewitched and, as a result, more serious acting roles were not made available to her. I am confident that if these two movies, perhaps even a trilogy with The Legend of Lizzie Borden, were released in DVD form, her fans would set the record straight on how highly they regard her serious acting abilities.

This scared the bejesus out of me when I was 11--but then, I was 11, and back then the scary content kids saw was pretty mild. (Nobody then would have thought of taking young children to R-rated horror movies, unlike so many crappy parents now.) But finally seeing it again recently, it was disappointing how tepid it was. This was the first post-"Bewitched" project for Elizabeth Montgomery, who made some of the very finest TV movies but had an inauspicious start with this one. She plays a woman whose sister is trying to separate from her scary husband (George Maharis), and we know early on that sis has been killed by somebody....once Liz arrives at the sibling's isolated country home, a lot of cumbersome plot mechanizations pass before she realizes her sister is dead and her own life is in danger. Montgomery seems too intelligent and common-sensical to be completely at home in this stereotypical woman-in-peril scenario-- other TVM staples of the time like Donna Mills would have been more appropriate. Several of the other posters here seem to be reviewing the film based on their memories from decades ago--if I'd done the same I'd rate it highly. But having seen it again, I can safely say: Your memories seriously flatter what is just not a very good, or even entertainingly bad, movie.

I think Liz was a little tired of comedy and chose the first script she was presented. I am a huge fan of hers, but this movie lacks in the plot department. First mistake is showing the dead body of her sister right off the bat. We know she's dead and have a pretty good idea who killed her. The only suspense is seeing the talented Liz Montgomery roam around in various stages of darkness trying to find her sister. Furthermore, she has to deal with Eileen Heckhart as a housekeeper who obviously was a "Charm School Dropout". She gives new meaning to the word "Old Bat". Sue Anne Langdon basically has a cameo role as a friend of Liz's sister who is only seen on the telephone talking to Liz. One of those movies that scared you as a kid but as an adult you see all the plot holes. Still, kinda fun to see Liz terrified.

I'm not sure what possessed me to want to watch The Victim, perhaps a chance to see Elizabeth Montgomery play a character post-Bewitched? Not sure but give it a viewing is what I did. Montgomery is fine and does a decent job with the materials given. Unfortunately there isn't all that much for her to work with.

She alone in a house on a dark, stormy night and the hones lines are down as well as the electricity is out as well. It's kind of a one woman film with the exception of the housekeeper play effectively but Eileen Heckart. I guess the best thing I can say about The Victim is that it's an easy, low-effort movie to watch.

I first saw The Victim (aka Out Of Contention) well over 25 years ago when I was very young. Being a passionate fan of Bewitched since I was a child, I loved to watch anything that starred Elizabeth Montgomery. This movie was (and still is) a real treat - whether you are a fan of Miss Montgomery's work or not. Elizabeth always shines in her roles, such as her portrayal as the rape victim in A Case Of Rape and as the suspected murderess in The Legend Of Lizzie Borden. Her performance in The Victim as Kate, a terrified woman trapped in an isolated house during a storm, with a killer after her is brilliant. If you like exciting suspenseful thrillers than this is one movie that will keep you on the edge of your seat till the end. Another great performance well worth mentioning is that of Eileen Heckhart who plays the eerie and suspicious housekeeper. Unfortunately like most of Miss Montgomery's movies, The Victim is not available on DVD and I believe that although it was released on VHS some years ago, it is a rarity these days. I was lucky to have taped it when it was aired on television some ten years ago and so have a nice copy of this very good movie. A must see!

This film is better than it sounds like it would be... it's a bit predictable but really worth watching if you like a good mystery-thriller. They kept the suspense built up and the suspicion between characters bouncing back and forth through my mind. I really enjoyed it.

Most of the time, the lights are on in the house - so it's not simply Elizabeth Montgomery in a dark house trying to get away from a killer as the plot summery makes it sounds like it is. Phones work for most of the film as well. But they are right about the dark and stormy night with a killer on the loose.

Very entertaining film for me... I recommend it to fans of the genre.

9/10

After learning that her sister Susan is contemplating divorce, Kate decides to travel to the distraught woman's remote country home and spend some time with her. When Kate arrives, however, Susan is nowhere in sight. That's because someone has murdered her and stuffed the body in a trunk in the basement. As a storm rages outside, Kate tries to figure out where her sister could have gone and places her own life in great danger...the killer is still on the premises! In her first post-BEWITCHED vehicle, Elizabeth Montgomery gives a solid dramatic performance. Merwin Gerard's teleplay is based on a short story by McKnight Malmar. Malmar's tale was first brought to television in 1962 as an episode of Boris Karloff's THRILLER anthology series. THRILLER stuck very closely to the story, which is kind of a pity, for it could have used a little punching up. Granted Malmar wrote a moderately creepy number, but Gerard (creator of the ONE STEP BEYOND show) adds several clever ingredients that heighten the tension and suspense.

i remember watching an elizabeth montgomery movie when i was maybe 5 years old (if that) and to this day i can remember this movie (in just bits and pieces). it was the movie i remembered all throughout my life because i was sooo scared. I think i remember the story part of it and the house constantly being dark. the main part that was the most freaky to me was Elizabeth walking around the house all dark and then there was someone in the field outside. At the time I thought i was an old witch but the memory of it is now way hazy so i can't really remember who it was but it was someone definitely in a field outside lurking...and that part is what freaked me out the most. i really wish i could see this movie again. if anyone knows how to get a copy please email me at [email protected]