And it's part of a great movie, the first ever done for TV even though there had been live dramatic specials on TV since the very beginning. Don Murray and Inger Stevens live the perfect Suburban life outside of New York City, and while the words mob or mafia are never uttered, it's obvious that's what they are involved in. Without indicating that he's the head of an organized crime ring, Fritz Weaver reveals that he's only taking what businessmen did during the depression to stay ahead in the business game and never worry about being broke. It's insinuated during the first hour that the racket is money laundering and creating monopolies in business, but as the film develops, it's obviously a lot more, and they resort to violence to stay ahead in this game.
The Borgia stick is both a prop and a code word, utilized as they make calls, and the Borgia stick in physical form is allegedly obtained with a swan's head that could allegedly eat a lion, from the actual Borgia family themselves, mobsters ahead of their time. So it's also a metaphor, and a darn good one.
You get good performances by some very familiar character actors, and Don and Inger are very good as the couple desperate to get out of their lives. Certainly it is obvious how the film is going to end because you see it at the very beginning, and the rest of the film is told in flashback. The suburban life that they have show us a sense of peace, but behind that peace is obvious danger that has them threatened not only by the heads of this agency but by the law as well. It's truly intriguing because of the subtlety and the way the emotions bills, making this not only the first TV movie but the very first TV movie classic.
The Borgia stick is both a prop and a code word, utilized as they make calls, and the Borgia stick in physical form is allegedly obtained with a swan's head that could allegedly eat a lion, from the actual Borgia family themselves, mobsters ahead of their time. So it's also a metaphor, and a darn good one.
You get good performances by some very familiar character actors, and Don and Inger are very good as the couple desperate to get out of their lives. Certainly it is obvious how the film is going to end because you see it at the very beginning, and the rest of the film is told in flashback. The suburban life that they have show us a sense of peace, but behind that peace is obvious danger that has them threatened not only by the heads of this agency but by the law as well. It's truly intriguing because of the subtlety and the way the emotions bills, making this not only the first TV movie but the very first TV movie classic.