Experiment in Terror

Kelly Sherwood works at a bank in San Francisco. When she arrives home one night, a stranger confronts her and forces her to help him take a large sum of money from her employer, threatening her teenage sister Toby if she refuses or goes to the authorities. The man knows the details of her life and keeps in touch by telephone, his strained breathing giving away nothing about who or where he is. Kelly turns to the FBI, and agent John Ripley takes charge of the case, deciding that her best protection lies in appearing to cooperate while the Bureau tries to identify the man behind the threats.

Blake Edwards directed and produced the film, working from a screenplay by Gordon and Mildred Gordon. It was the third of the twenty-seven features he directed in chronological order, arriving between Breakfast at Tiffany's in 1961 and The Pink Panther in 1963. Glenn Ford plays Ripley, with Lee Remick as Kelly and Stefanie Powers as Toby, among a credited cast of thirty that also includes Roy Poole, Ned Glass and Anita Loo. The film runs just over two hours.

Made by Columbia Pictures with Geoffrey-Kate Productions, the film took in about one million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.3 from roughly 7,500 votes, and on TMDB 7.1 from 134 votes, while a small sample of critics' reviews gives it 8.2. Those figures put the audience response somewhat below the critical one.