Vacationing in a small town, a frantic Daniel Corban shows up at the local police station, declaring that his wife has disappeared. Corban imperiously demands that the easygoing police inspector drop everything and find his missing spouse. Within a few days, a woman claiming to be his wife shows up, but Corban insists that he's never met the woman before.
14 Apr One of My Wives is Missing (1976)
Switched Narratives
There are spoilers here for this filmed stage play that in the end is not worth it.
The basic idea is appealing. We are presented with a man who seems to be the target of a massive scam involving a switched wife.
We sit through the scam as it tortures the guy with a cop on the side that just doesn’t get it. There’s so very much of this both is tedious and makes no sense.
We are supposed to be rewarded by a feint twist at the end when it is revealed that the cop — the centre of the thing — is in on the scam. If you’ve been patient, this works because the cop has been developed all along as our surrogate in the story. Unlike a Poirot, we are ahead of this hapless guy.
But in the last few minutes, we see that he has enlisted the actors in a murder play to stage the whole thing to catch the husband who has indeed murdered his wife.
This is a good twist, but massively unfair. They did not play by the rules. Many plot points makes less sense once we have this reveal. In a successful twisty mystery, after the reveal, things are supposed to make more sense. Not so here.
Production values are poor.
Posted in 2023
Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
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