The Third Day (1965)

A man (George Peppard) walks away from an accident with no memory, yes amnesia. When a woman's (Sally Kellerman) body is found at the scene of the accident, the District Attorney (Robert Webber) suspects it's murder and not an accident as Peppard attempts to reconstruct the events surrounding the fatal accident. Based on the novel by Joseph Hayes (THE DESPERATE HOURS) and directed by Jack Smight (HARPER). This film may have been shot by three time Oscar winning cinematographer Robert Surtees (BEN-HUR) in wide screen Panavision with a (then) high powered cast but it looks and plays out like a made for TV movie and not a good TV movie either. The mystery isn't very well thought out and the pedestrian dialogue is often abysmal (poor Kellerman gets the brunt of the bad lines). It's fairly lackluster through out but when Peppard steals a police car toward the end of the movie, the picture quickly implodes on itself. The underscore by muzakmeister Percy Faith is of no help. The large cast includes Elizabeth Ashley, Roddy McDowall, Herbert Marshall, Arthur O'Connell, Arte Johnson, Charles Drake and in the film's one good performance, the British actress Mona Washbourne as Peppard's aunt.