EDITOR’S NOTE: A Tattered Web was on the CBS Late Movie on August 7 and November 16, 1972.

This made-for-TV movie originally aired on September 24, 1971 and was soon on the CBS Late Movie. It stars Lloyd Bridges as Sgt. Ed Stagg, an older cop devoted to the daughter he raised alone, Tina (Sally Shockley). Tina’s mother cheated on him and disappeared, so he’s super worried about her new husband, Steve (Frank Converse), whom he keeps catching in the apartment of fallen woman Louise Campbell (Anne Helm). He warns him, he warns her, he shoves her into a wall, she dies. What’s a cop to do?

When he and his partner, Sgt. Joe Marcus (Murray Hamilton), are assigned the case, you can imagine what it does to his mental health. Even since the betrayal of his wife, he’s kept his daughter in the dark, trying to remove anything harmful from her life, keeping her almost as a child. Now that she’s living with her oil worker husband under his roof, he’s trying to do the same thing. Except that the neighbors of the dead Ms. Campbell saw Steve go in and out of her place; Ed’s also left his fingerprints behind on a glass.

So he does what any cop would. He finds a man on death row named Willard Edson (Broderick Crawford) and convinces him that he also killed Campbell. Everyone gets away with it, right? Maybe.

In 74 minutes, director Paul Wendkos and writer Art Wallace provide everyone with great material. Bridges isn’t doing comedy or being a nice old man in this. He’s a lunatic from the start. Converse and Hamilton shine, while Crawford makes a meal of the few moments he’s in the movie.

Like many TV movies, this played in theaters overseas. In Norway and Sweden, it was Alibi. In Spain, The Portals of Eden.

You can watch this on Tubi.