While the first few films on the Mill Creek Through the Decades: 1960s Collection were light comedy, this one made me sit up and pay attention to its rough drama.

Based on the 1954 play The Traveling Lady, which was also written by this movie’s director and writer Horton Foote (To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies).

Georgette Thomas (Lee Remick) has brought her six-year-old daughter Margaret Rose to meet her husband Henry Thomas (Steve McQueen). He’s never met her and may not even have known that she exists, as all he cares about is being a singer. He’s spent. the last few years in jail after stabbing a man and has been working for Kate Dawson, the woman who raised him — and beat him repeatedly — after his parents died. Her abuse has broken him, as the night after her death, he steals her silver, wrecks his car into the cemetery gates and howls into the night as he stabs her grave, all while his wife watches from the shadows.

Obviously, Henry is no father. But it takes Georgette the entire film to realize that she has to get her daughter away from him if they ever want to live a peaceful life.

Shot on location in Columbus, Texas, this is a dusty and dark exploration of love not being enough.

Mill Creek’s new Through the Decades: 1960s Collection has twelve movies: How to Ruin a Marriage and Save Your Life, The Notorious Landlady, Under the Yum Yum Tree, The Chase, Good Neighbor Sam, Mickey One, Lilith, Genghis Khan, Luv, Who Was That Lady? and Hook, Line and Sinker. You can get it from Deep Discount.