History Film / TheLegendOfLizzieBorden

''The Legend of Lizzie Borden'' originally aired on {{Creator/ABC}} on February 10, 1975. Creator/FionnulaFlanagan plays Bridget, the Bordens' Irish maid. Creator/KatherineHelmond plays Lizzie's older sister Emma, who's got an ironclad alibi (being out of town). Creator/GloriaStuart of future ''Film/{{Titanic|1997}}'' fame has a small role as a customer in a shop.

The peace of quiet Fall River, Massachusetts is shattered on August 4, 1892, when a panicked maid runs out from the home of wealthy banker Andrew Borden. A doctor arrives and finds him dead, having been gruesomely murdered with a hatchet. People at the scene are still reeling from the shock of this when Andrew's wife Abby is also discovered upstairs, also dead, also killed with a hatchet.

* AdaptedOut: John Morse, Lizzie and Emma’s maternal uncle who was visiting the Bordens at the time of the murders and was one of the early suspects, is omitted entirely in this dramatization. This is rather significant as it was his staying in the guest room was the reason why Abby went in there to clean up.

''The Legend of Lizzie Borden'' originally aired on {{Creator/ABC}} on February 10, 1975. Creator/FionnulaFlanagan plays Bridget, the Bordens' Irish maid. Creator/KatherineHelmond plays Lizzie's older sister Emma, who has an ironclad alibi, being out of town. Creator/GloriaStuart of future ''Film/{{Titanic|1997}}'' fame has a small role as a customer in a shop.

* BloodIsThicker: Emma lies on the stand in an effort to protect Lizzie, who is the only family she has left at this point.

* AdaptedOut: John Morse, Lizzie and Emma’s maternal uncle who was visiting the Bordens at the time of the murders and was one of the early suspects, is omitted entirely in this dramatization.

* ILoveTheDead: If Andrew Borden weren't profoundly creepy enough with the hinted incest with Lizzie, there's another scene that hints at this. Andrew, who once worked as a mortician, is shown pulling back a sheet and taking a long look at the face of a DropDeadGorgeous woman. He then pulls the sheet back over her face, and then ''feels her breasts through the sheet''. Lizzie watches all of this through a window. There is another scene where Andrew shows Lizzie a corpse and insists that Lizzie touch it, describing the flesh as "smooth" and "cool to the touch". This freaks Lizzie out.

* ChristmasCake: Unlike other dramatizations that portray Lizzie as a PsychoLesbian, here she appears as a frustrated heterosexual woman who missed the narrow Victorian "marriage window" due to her father's stinginess and negative reputation around town.

* TheSuffragette: A group of suffragettes can be seen picketing the courthouse in support of Lizzie once the trial becomes nationwide media circus.

* TheSuffragette: A group of suffragettes can be seen picketing the courthouse in support of Lizzie once the trial becomes nationwide MediaCircus.

The peace of quiet Fall River, Massachusetts is shattered on August 4, 1892, when a panicked maid runs from the home of wealthy banker Andrew Borden. A doctor arrives and finds him dead, having been gruesomely murdered with a hatchet. People at the scene are still reeling from the shock of this when Andrew's wife Abby is also discovered upstairs, also dead, also killed with a hatchet.

The peace of quiet Fall River, Massachusetts is shattered on August 4, 1892, when a panicked maid runs from the home of wealthy townsman Andrew Borden. A doctor arrives and finds him dead, having been gruesomely murdered with a hatchet. People at the scene are still reeling from the shock of this when Andrew's wife Abby is also discovered upstairs, also dead, also killed with a hatchet.

Suspicion soon focuses on Lizzie (Montogomery), Andrew's daughter and Abby's stepdaughter, who was one of only two other people in the house at the time, the other being Bridget the maid. Lizzie is oddly calm and undisturbed, and details of her story don't match up. Soon, she is on trial for murder. But could a prim, well-bred upper-class lady really have taken a hatchet and chopped two people to death?

The peace of quiet Fall River, Massachusetts is shattered on August 4, 1892, when a panicked maid runs from the home of wealthy resident Andrew Borden. A doctor arrives and finds him dead, having been gruesomely murdered with a hatchet. People at the scene are still reeling from the shock of this when Andrew's wife Abby is also discovered upstairs, also dead, also killed with a hatchet.

''The Legend of Lizzie Borden'' is a 1975 TV movie directed by Paul Wendkos. If there's a definitive screen version of the UsefulNotes/LizzieBorden story, it's probably this MadeForTVMovie from TheSeventies. [[LostInImitation It's certainly the one that subsequent versions are copying.]]

The peace of quiet Fall River, Massachusetts, is ruined on August 4, 1892, when a panicked maid runs out of the home of wealthy Andrew Borden. A doctor arrives and finds Andrew dead, having been gruesomely murdered with a hatchet. People at the scene are still reeling from the shock of this when Andrew's wife Abby is discovered upstairs, also dead, also killed with a hatchet.

Suspicion soon focuses on Andrew's daughter and Abby's stepdaughter Lizzie (Creator/ElizabethMontgomery, in a big PlayingAgainstType role just a few years after the end of her wholesome sitcom ''Series/{{Bewitched}}''). Lizzie was one of only two other people in the house at the time, the other being Bridget the maid. Lizzie is oddly calm and undisturbed, and details of her story don't match up. Soon, she is on trial for murder. But could a prim, well-bred upper-class lady really have taken a hatchet and chopped two people to death?

* VillainHasAPoint: Invoked by Sylvia Knowlton before the denouement when she admits she empathizes with Lizzie and understands what could potentially drive a woman like her to murder.

''The Legend of Lizzie Borden'' is a 1975 TV movie directed by Paul Moskos. If there's a definitive screen version of the UsefulNotes/LizzieBorden story, it's probably this MadeForTVMovie from TheSeventies. [[LostInImitation It's certainly the one that subsequent versions are copying.]]

* GilliganCut: When Bridget testifies that she never saw any quarreling at the Borden household, it immediately cuts to a flashback of Bridget witnessing a particularly ugly argument between Lizzie, Andrew, and Abby.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Lizzie was seen burning a dress, but Hosea dismisses that, saying that Lizzie would not have been so stupid as to burn her blood-spattered murder dress in front of two witnesses and with a cop standing just outside an open door. But then he wonders, "What **did** she wear?" This film's answer was that [[FullFrontalAssault she was wearing nothing]].

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Elizabeth Montgomery's nipples are briefly visible during the scene where Lizzie chops her father up. One can only assume that ABC censors missed this, since there's no way in the world it would have been allowed under American network television standards either then or decades later.

** While in reality, Lizzie was acquitted of the murders and her guilt has never been definitively established, the film adds a fictionalized denouement that shows her actually killing her father and stepmother with a hatchet.

* PragmaticVillainy: [[spoiler: Lizzie decides to murder Abby first, because her property would automatically transfer to her husband Andrew immediately upon death. Thus, when she kills Andrew, she would also inherit Abby's estate along with her father's by default.]]