Kraft Suspense Theatre (TV Series) The Threatening Eye (1964) User Reviews

See Jack Klugman without his usual toupee.

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 13 October 2015]

During much of his career, Jack Klugman wore a toupee. I don't think it was out of vanity, as I saw him interviewed without it several times. But in this pre-"Odd Couple" appearance he's without the hair piece--and it makes sense considering he's supposed to be playing a relatively dull middle aged man.

In this installment of "Kraft Suspense Theatre" which was directed by Ida Lupino, Jack Klugman plays Steve--a rather ordinary executive. A new lady, Yvette, comes to work at the same company and soon she is contriving all sorts of situations in order to be alone with Steve. After a while, it's pretty obvious she's trying to snag Steve--even though he's a happily married man. She even does what she can to break up the marriage...and wow is it going to be bad!! But why...what's with this need to have Steve?! And how will Lt. Curwood (Pat O'Brien) figure into all this?

This is a rather chilling and well made show. I loved Yvette's character and the episode worked pretty well. The only negative was with the time slot, the ending came a bit too quickly--but you cannot really blame the writer for this.

Adrian Lyne before his time

[searchanddestroy-1 · 8/10 · 15 May 2021]

Of course you'll think about PLAY MISTY FOR ME or FATAL OBSESSION when watching this daring story for this period. Ida Lupino shines in her directing. Among the good part of this series. A very erratic series.

Stalker style

[ctomvelu1 · 6/10 · 3 March 2013]

A young woman from Quebec takes an office job and then begins to pursue a middle-aged, married executive, to his consternation and mystification. He has a drab, alcoholic wife whom he very much loves, and shies away from the young woman and her advances. Various unpleasant things occur as her stalking grows more intense, and it is not until the very end that we discover the woman's real agenda. To say the explanation is a bit far-fetched is putting it mildly, but it serves the purpose of supplying a twist ending to a TV series that doted on twist endings. Jack Klugman plays the bemused executive, and Phyllis Thaxter is his alcoholic wife. Pat O'Brien is the cop who becomes involved after a crime is committed. Nothing particularly wrong with the episode, but there's not enough going on to keep our interest up based on the running time. The actress playing the French Canadian has a rather thick accent, probably put on a bit, that today probably would generate laughter.

I've got the truth going for me that's all! And I'll take my chances with that!

[kapelusznik18 · 6/10 · 24 August 2014]

****MAJOR SPOILERS*** Outstanding performance by the late Jack Klugman as quit and unassuming accountant Steve Zaro who's stalked by gold digging psychopath Yvette Duval, Annie Fargue, who in the end sticks it to her in ways that she never imagined. Yvette puts on this act of being madly in love with Steve in order to get to his soon to become public, the him, inheritance that his uncle left him. The problem is that Steve's recovering alcoholic wife Mildred, Phyllis Thaxter, is in the way of her sinister plan.

Making as if she's Mildred's friend Yvette tells her that Steve is playing the field and running around with all the women in his office which of course she's not one of them. Getting Mildred drunk and meeting her in a deserted place outside of L.A city limits Yvette smashed her skull in and pushes her car down a hill making it look like she got killed in a drunken driving incident. Now turning on Mildred's grieving husband Yvette begins to blackmail him in saying that he was involved in his wife's death or better yet murder in order to get her out of the way to marry her! This idiotic as well as mindless plan by Yvette never took into consideration that she in fact was implicating herself in Mildred's murder! That in her feeling that she's somehow would be immune from prosecution, in being forced into it, by having that pasty Steve be the one who planned it!

***SPOILERS*** Steve who wasn't that interest in Yvette romantically in the first place he always thought, in how she came on to him, she's a bit strange if not nutty just tells her to go fly a kite and if she want's to tell the police that he with her was involved in Mildred's murder so be it! It's the truth that will exonerate him and in the end convict her. Going into a wild tirade and spilling the beans about her involvement in Mildred's murder and plans to blackmail Steve Yvette ends up convicting herself. It's the L.A police under the command of Let. John Curwood, Pat O'Brian, who've got the place where Steve & Yvette are bugged and have taken down her confessing, via tape recorder, ever world she said to use against her in a court of law!