The bizarre premise for this often remote and uninvolving drama is that an otherwise apparently normal man can become so alienated from his own feelings and his own wife and children that he plans their murder. Paul Steward (
Hal Holbrook) and his wife (
Louise Fletcher) are about as interesting as a TV test pattern. Although Paul has realized the American Dream -- that it to say, he has money and is successful in business -- he finds the dream hollow and meaningless. Instead of waking up, he decides that his family is to blame for everything and begins to make elaborate plans for killing them off, talking it over with others and disguising it as a fictional story for his magazine. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide