"The Glass Web" was originally filmed in 3-D in 1953. To director Jack Arnold's credit, he doesn't litter the movie with 3-D effects but limits them to scenes that do little to interfere with the plot.

Edward G. Robinson, John Forsythe and Richard Denning are involved in the weekly production of realism crime TV show called "Crime of the Week". Kathleen Hughes plays an actress who "uses" men to achieve her goals. Both Forsythe and Robinson, unbeknownst to each other are involved with her. When she turns up murdered it is decided to make her demise the subject of the season ending show in order to encourage the sponser to pick up the show for the following season. But who really killed her?

"The Glass Web" is interesting not only for its intricate plot and 3-D effects, but for a look inside 1950s TV production. It was a time in television when shows were produced live on a weekly basis. So you can appreciate the pressure upon the production team to come up with a new and interesting show every week. This is the basis behind the plot of this picture.

Robinson is cool and sinister in his role and Forsythe is very good as the harried writer. Kathleen Hughes is also quite good as the femme fatale. Trivia buffs may remember that she was known as "the 3-D girl" during the 3-D craze, due to her many appearances in 3-D films.

"The Glass Web" is a dated but effective thriller representative of the period.

Though much less stylish to look and (and listen to), The Glass Web owes a debt to Michael Curtiz' The Unsuspected of six years earlier. Both movies take as their principal setting a live true-crime show – the earlier in the waning days of radio, the latter in the dawning of the television era. And both make use of the technology of their respective mediums to help unravel their plots.

Head writer of the crime show John Forsythe and researcher Edward G. Robinson are at loggerheads; Robinson finds Forsythe callow and slapdash while Forsythe dismisses Robinson, a former police reporter, as an old fussbudget. Both men, however, are carrying on with the same woman, a Los Angeles television actress ( Kathleen Hughes) whose interest in them is entirely mercenary – apart from the professional advancement she schemes for, she's always got a hand out for `loans,' which then escalate into blackmail.

When she turns up strangled in her apartment, there's little weeping or gnashing of teeth. Robinson proposes turning the solving of her murder into their season-ending cliffhanger, sure to cinch a skittish sponsor. Both he and Forsythe turn in competing scripts; one of them, however, contains details which could have been known only to the killer....

Set in the world of early television, The Glass Web looks and feels like early television. But upon its release it was part of the early-1950s Hollywood panic over the upstart rival medium, and featured one of the desperate gimmicks calculated to lure viewers back into theaters: 3-D. Fortunately, the projectiles that got early spectators ducking in their seats are confined to a few intense spates and today look rather quaint (even in 3-D, they'd look quaint). Director Jack Arnold went on to make at least two movies that have been enshrined as camp classics: The Incredible Shrinking Man and High School Confidential. The Glass Web is nowhere near so memorable, but it's diverting enough in a don't-expect-much kind of way.

Breezy programmer pits "Crime of the Week" star John Forsythe in a battle of wits against technical consultant Edward G. Robinson. The backdrop is the murder of a calculating and blackmailing beautiful siren, well-played by the radiant Kathleen Hughes. Meanwhile, the record "Temptation" plays over and over and over again. A solid "B" movie supporting cast and inventive direction moves this one along quickly with the debonair Forsythe disarmed for quite a while by the bulldoggishly cynical Edward G. Robinson. The crime eventually gets reenacted on the TV show in the show's climactic scene. The trap is set, and somebody bites. I enjoyed the resolution, and hope you will also. Warning, Temptation is played so many times that it will probably run through your head for quite some time after seeing this one.