User Reviews

"A Tangled Web" is bolstered by a strong cast in a downbeat story. Robert Redford stars as David Chesterman, a compulsive thief whose wealthy mother catches him flirting with their French maid, Marie Petit (Zohra Lampert), who is unceremoniously dismissed on the spot. The clearly infatuated David impetuously decides to marry the lovely Marie, but winds up being cut off by his unperturbed mother. The couple turn to David's friend (and fence for stolen goods), Karl Gault (Barry Morse), who is secretly in love with Marie and decides to set up her new husband for a fall. David goes on the run after killing a guard during a botched robbery, leaving his devoted wife in the care of the obsessive Karl. This was Redford's second and last Hitchcock hour (since "A Piece of the Action"), and he is well matched by the always splendid Zohra Lampert, a beautiful actress of remarkable (and sadly underrated) talent, best remembered as the girl who got Warren Beatty in 1961's "Splendor in the Grass" (Natalie Wood was the competition).

****SPOILERS**** Robert Redford as spoiled rich kid David Chesterman before he made his big splash as the tragic and misunderstood, in that he didn't do what he was accused of, Bubba Reeves in the 1966 thriller "The Chase" together with Barry Morse as Karl Gualt, the owner of the famous Wigwam Boutique, who also made it big later on as the bull dog like detective Lt. Philip Gerard in the hit TV series "The Fugitive" are together in this exciting Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode. They play two sleazy crooks who are more interested in pretty French maid Marie Patit, Zohra Lampert, then the jewels that their after.

In fact it's David who ends up marrying Marie causing his mom Mrs. Ethel Chesterman, Gertaude Flynn,to kick the two lovebirds out of the house and write David out of her will leaving him and Marie almost penniless. Getting together with his good friend wig boutique owner Karl Gualt, who not only own the wig shop but is one of its biggest clients, in planning a number to jewelry heists to pay his bills. Karl tips David off in where large amounts of jewelry is being stored and he end up stealing it. After almost getting himself killed in one of his jewelry heists David goes straight getting a job at the local fish market only to later get fired when he took a swing at his boss. With Marie, who threatened to leave him, not knowing that he's back robbing rich old ladies David together with Karl's help breaks into a funeral home and robs one of the stiffs there of all the jewelry she was to be buried with. During the robbery a security guard was killed when he discovered David doing his thing.

Caught and put on trial for murder it's Karl David's partner in crime who rats him out which has the guy convicted for 1st degree murder. As we soon learn Karl who couldn't compete with David, or Robert Redford, in the good looks department and was some 20 older then him had his eyes on the petite and pretty Marie all the time. With Karl admitting to Marie that he in fact set David up, and may very possibly have murdered the security guard, he now wants Marie all for himself! Since David, in being sentenced to death for murder, won't be around that long anyway! Marie after escaping form Karl's crutches heads straight for the courthouse, with the new evidence Karl gave her, to have David at least vindicated on the murder charge.

****SPOILERS*** Tense final with Marie threatening to jump some 10 floors to the street below from the courthouse unless she's allowed to see David one last time before they, the police, send him away for good. A tearful David in handcuffs finally brings his wife Marie to her senses by admitting that he in fact did kill the security guard but by accident not in cold blood! It was David who now finally realized what a threat to society he really was and in the end decided to take his own medicine; as well as prevent Marie from killing herself because she felt that he was innocent!

There's no real twist to this episode, even when it's teased that Karl Gault (Barry Morse) might have been responsible for the death of the mortuary caretaker during David Chesterman's (Robert Redford) robbery of a dead woman's jewels! Gault almost admitted as much to the lovely Marie (Zohra Lampert) when he tried to force his affections on her after David's arrest. You have to wonder why David would have worn a clumsy scarf to one of his jobs, and wonder even more how he could have lost it to implicate his presence on the scene, since it was an easily identifiable piece of evidence linking him to the crime. There's a lot of padding to this story to have it meet its nearly one hour run time, like the amusement park scene and the one where Marie decides to sell her hair to fashion a wig for one of Gault's wealthy clients. The finale is meant to be tension filled with Marie's threat to jump from an upper story court building, but it ends with a whimper when David confesses to the murder of the mortuary guy, which was telegraphed early in the story when he almost beat a guy senseless for insulting Marie.