EDITOR’S NOTE: Signpost to Murder was on the CBS Late Movie on February 23, June 22, 1972, and July 20, 1973.

“Are we all potential killers?” What a great tagline! That idea is the basis for this film, directed by George Englund (A Christmas to Remember, Zachariah, The Vegas Strip War) and written by Sally Benson (Viva Las Vegas, The Singing Nun) and Monte Doyle.

Alex Forrester (Stuart Whitman) is a mental patient who killed his wife ten years ago and has been rehabilitated in an asylum. He feels that way, at least, but no one else does. So he takes matters into his own hands, unmercifully beats his therapist, Dr. Fleming (Edward Mulhare), and runs into the foggy night. Maybe that doctor shouldn’t have told him about an old law that gives a new trial to escapees who elude capture for two weeks.

Who would come up with such a law?

He goes to the house he’s stared at for ten years from his cell and hides there as Molly Thomas (Joanne Woodward) waits for her husband to return from a business trip.

He easily kidnaps the woman but is shocked by what he finds outside the house: a dead body, throat slit, stuck in the water wheel. Who killed this man? Was it him? Why can’t he remember? And when the body disappears, who took it?

Even as the police and the local clergyman (Alan Napier, Alfred from TV’s Batman) come to the house to search for Molly’s husband’s body or comfort her, she starts to fall for Alex. As you can imagine, this movie is utterly ridiculous in the best of ways and throws twists and turns at the viewer.

Do you know who loved it? India. While the movie started as a stage play, they re-adapted it into another stage play, Dhummas, which was made into three different movies — in Gujarati, Marathi and Hindi — all starring Sarita Joshi. It was also made as Ittefaq in 1969 and was remade as Ittefaq in 2017.

MGM also released this as a Psycho-Rama double feature with Hysteria. The poster for it makes me want to watch both movies again.