Some years ago, Mousey married blonde beauty Jean Seberg, a younger woman in need of a husband due to an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Mousey was an adequate provider for Seberg and adored her son, even though he was not the biological father. But their marriage was loveless, and inevitably Seberg met a better man.
Seberg divorced Mousey to marry John Vernon, and the resulting custody battle for the preteenaged son was won by Seberg. Douglas was traumatized, and is now desperate and unhinged. He seeks revenge on the world in general, and on Seberg and Vernon in particular.
How others will see it. Despite the stellar leads, Mousey is mostly obscure today. At imdb.com, it has only a few hundred user votes, and a mere average-plus user rating. The user reviews are all over the map, with some highly positive, but the consensus is that the film is unpleasant and mildly disappointing. Many viewers are likely turned off by a scene in which Douglas needlessly murders an exceptionally nice young woman.
How I felt about it. Mousey does have its faults. There is no need for Douglas to injure his hand breaking into the school, when he could simply walk in through the front door. Vernon must be quite wealthy to afford private detectives to tail Douglas 24 hours a day. And too many 1970s crime dramas have the police telling the victim to keep the killer on the phone line for several minutes to trace the call.
Nonetheless, Mousey has a quality cast, notably three-time Best Actor Oscar nominee Kirk Douglas as the lead. Jean Seberg, the femme fatale in Breathless (1960), is credible as the woman in peril for her final English-language film. John Vernon, the Dean from Animal House (1978), is perfect as a man ideal to Seberg yet dislikable to the viewer.
Douglas seems to relish his antihero character, simultaneously sinister and pathetic. Douglas has given up on the world except for his adopted son. He knows his son is lost to him, but maintains the quixotic hope that the son won't change his last name to match his new stepfather's. When even that can't be achieved, he becomes a murderous psychopath to convince Seberg to give in to his disturbed will.
Douglas' ultimate fate is unknown, but hopefully he ends up behind bars for the rest of his life, since that is what he deserves.
Director Daniel Petrie had early success with A Raisin in the Sun (1961), but most of his best-known films were made after Mousey. They include the mini-series "Sybil", which riveted viewers in 1976; the acclaimed Resurrection (1981), which landed a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Ellen Burstyn; the Paul Newman vehicle Fort Apache the Bronx; and Cocoon: The Return (1981), the franchise-killing sequel to the 1985 blockbuster.