Climax!

A forest fire spreads with fury, threatens a town with destruction, and brands a boy a murderer.

The technical notes say that this television drama was in black and white. But I remember its being broadcast in color, one of the very few broadcasts in color at that time. I remember because my father was trying out, on loan, a new color television set, and we saw this broadcast as a test of the color quality of the broadcast and of the set. The quality was good for this broadcast, as I recall, but not for all broadcasts.

When a man with the reputation of a fast gun turns up in a small New Mexico community, the townspeople, including the man's son, want no part of him. Then two brothers who have vowed revenge on the gunfighter ride into town.

As she's leaving to meet her daughter at the airport, a psychoanalyst receives a phone call from one of her patients, who tells her he's just killed a man. When the two women return home the patient, who is waiting for them, pulls a gun, forces the daughter into a room, and locks the door.

A criminal lawyer makes a desperate gamble to defend a boy charged with murder. Risking his career, his love, even his health, he faces an even greater terror when he finds his own guilty conscience is on trial.

Tom Gardener invites the invalid widow of a man he accidentally killed to live with himself and his wife, unaware that her facade of sweetness and gentleness conceals a scheme to destroy his marriage.