FIVE DESPERATE WOMEN

US, 1971, 73 minutes, Colour.
Robert Conrad, Bradford Dillman, Anjanette Comer, Joan Hackett, Denise Nicholas, Stephanie Powers, Julie Somers.
Directed by Ted Post.

Five Desperate Women is melodramatic murder mystery: five married women who take a holiday on a resort on an isolated island – with only the captain and another man around. One of the women is murdered, the others become suspicious of the two men, and there is a revelation of the killer. Routine entertainment.

1. The emphasis of the title? Expectations for television audiences?

2. The quality of the mystery, the atmosphere of menace, identifying with the victims, working out the villain?

3. How well did the film establish the atmosphere of the reunion for the girls? The initial focus on Mary Grace and her mother and her companion? Creating a mood of fear and madness? In the light of the pre-credits mysterious murder?

4. The girls and their meeting? The chatter and the happy atmosphere, ordinary girls, the holiday and the island?

5. How well did the film develop their characters Lucy and the atmosphere of the booth and her drinking, her empty life? Dorian and her pretence? Joy and the explanation of her survival as hooker? Gloria as a leader? Mary Grace and her reticence? Their dismissing their background and lives amongst themselves and the intertwining of their lives? How credible were these women?

6. The opening and the murder? The information about the maniac? The tense of menace as this developed?

7. The presentation of the two men? The development of their characters? The emphasis on the mystery? Was it obvious who was mad? The encounter with Dorian? The death and the revelation of the killer?

8. The importance of the incidents like the fire, Dorian's death? being locked in the home, their false sense of liberation?

9. The climax and the focus on Mary Grace and the attempted murder?

10. The success of the film as entertainment, as realism, as mystery, as character presentation?