'Ordeal' a remake, almost

Twenty years later, the writer, Francis Cockrell, got this movie remade for TV as "Ordeal," starring Arthur HIll. The story was faithful to the original, right up until the end. The characters also had different names.

Instead of getting rescued by the old codger and ultimately getting his revenge on both his wife and her lover, the tycoon builds a fire to attract a circling airplane, only to conclude that it contained the wife and her lover, and they were making sure he was dead.

He quickly eliminates all evidence of his presence (he thinks) and watches from hiding as the two conspirators return to the site by car to where they'd seen smoke. They reveal their criminal intents, and he unintentonally reveals his survival by leaving one clue: he had cut his wife's scarf off his arm, and she finds it hanging from a bush near the water hole that had saved him.

After the dissolve, we see the tycoon limping out of the desert toward the Sheriff's car, which is sitting by the couple's car. He identifies himself and learns that the couple had become lost in the night, but were found by his deputies.

The Sheriff takes him toward the nearest town. He asks what the tycoon wants him to do about the couple. "I walked away and got lost in the desert," he replies. "Is that a crime?" Then he asks to be let out of the car before entering the town so he can walk in from the desert. "I can't explain why right now."

The film goes to titles as we watch him walking in from desert.

What? No revenge? Nobody goes to jail? Very unsatisfying alternative ending. And, no delightful old desert rat as a hero. Up to that point, though, the film was almost as good as the original. Good cast. Good film making.