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Hawaii Five-O: Over Fifty? Steal (1970)
Don't mistake novelty for quality
I'm torn, this episode is a nice breakaway from the formulaic criminal pursuit on Hawaii Five O, but the reason it has appeal to the regular viewer is just contrast and emotional stimulation, not quality.
So as an actual episode, it's 0 out of 10 for reasons listed below, but for wacky breaking through the wall of tradition, I'll give it 5 of 10.
It leaves any story behind, just to let Hume Cronyn have an episode to perform. So that's actually a good thing most of the time, but Hume blasts through the characters, makeup, and costumes here like its a vaudeville show. An his acting is painfully over the top and obvious. It's pretty much a comic book episode, which of course is why it's appealing from an energy standpoint, but that doesn't make it great.
And speaking of vaudeville show, the Morton Stevens score is not a thing of brilliance, he simply wrote up or found a few minutes of 20s ragtime, and he loops it through the wacky parts. Again, it's a contrast to the usual corporate stock music, so it rises in interest due to novelty not quality.
Lastly, although the story is not really important to the episode, it unfortunately totally discards any sense of reality, as the criminal bases his enterprise in a location that includes a massive amount of physical evidence to be caught with, rather than using a generic location - say an ordinary home. This simplifies McGarrett's job to a quick trip to the forensics lab and a casual drive. (Trying to avoid spoilers here) In summary, this episode is the typical "comedy escape" episode that producer/writers throw in when they or the cast are tired of doing the same thing over and over, or the ratings are slipping.
Not sophisticated, not complex, not deep, not unique, not that interesting. I came here to seek out any mention of Cronyn's overacting and found only goofy praise. Oh well.
Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title (1966)
Morey Amsterdam was given too much money and rope
This movie is like a "make a wish" grant for a dying child. In this case, the producers of the Dick Van Dyke show must have felt sorry for Morey Amsterdam as they killed the last big job he'd ever have when then ended the Van Dyke series.
Consider the relatively sophisticated humor coming on television at this time, much less the movie. Addams Family, Munsters, Batman, etc. All with loads of adult based double entendre humor that would make kids giggle, yet make adults think twice.
And these shows used many celebrity cameos like this movie does, but the other shows understood the point of having the celebrities make fun of themselves. This movie just parades stars through like they all took numbers at the studio cafeteria and were waiting in line.
I've never been a big fan of Amsterdam's version of vaudeville humor (consider the Marx brothers were from the same era and how much bawdy and funnier they were), so jamming it into a full length movie doesn't make it any better.
I have a feeling that Amsterdam was a great ad-libber on the Dick Van Dyke show, and they kept him around to sweeten scripts, but he wasn't really much of a performer - Dick Van Dyke could have done the show by himself.
This movie IS fun to run in the background just to see how many performers whored themselves out for a few seconds of screen time, but other than that, this movie has little entertainment value.
The File of the Golden Goose (1969)
Wow. Yul Brynner must have been forcing a contract rider!
The movie itself is a pedestrian crime movie that takes a tiny premise and extends it over the length of a movie. Not a good thing.
So the movie basically stinks. But if you want a hoot, watch it to see Yul Brynner's horrifying attempt to sound like a New York "wiseguy" while swimming through his natural Russian accent. It's not so much the accent being silly, as the dialog being something from the "Dead End Kids".
If people paid to see this in the theater, maybe it was a good escape since cable TV and the internet hadn't been invented yet. Or maybe they asked for their money back.
Really dreadful.
Columbo: Troubled Waters (1975)
Entertaining episode, but the mystery writing is very weak
I love the Colombo series, and this episode "Troubled Waters" is VERY entertaining and well acted, with a superb cast - well worth watching.
But the "mystery" here is both poorly conceived from the criminal's standpoint, and only "solved" by the most outlandish luck.
First the crime: I realize that the crime needs unreasonable, illogical steps to give Colombo something to investigate. If the murderer just blows the victim away in the middle of the night with no witnesses, then they probably get away with it and Colombo has little to investigate.
But the murderer in this episode relies on the following elements to go PERFECTLY fine.
- He has to fake a heart attack, and not be found out. In this episode, he inexplicably leaves the ONLY evidence of wrong doing behind at the scene.
- He has to plant and then retrieve the murder weapon from the victim's own room without her finding it in the interim. Why he cannot hide the gun ANYWHERE ELSE on the entire ship is not explained.
- He feels he has to kill the victim in a very crowded environment (cruise ship) AND frame someone else for the crime - all while avoiding being seen by anyone of hundreds of possible witnesses. (Which is the biggest hole in his plan - WAY too many witnesses)
- His plan relies on incredibly precise timing in killing the victim during a brief performance break, rather than just killing her in the middle of the night. What's all the complex timing for? It achieves nothing.
- His plan relies on him NEVER being discovered missing by the nurse in the hospital area he is supposed to be sleeping in. There is NO reason that at ANY time he is missing, she would not look in on him and find him missing. This is perhaps the least plausible part of the entire plot.
- His pointless plan to frame the other man relies on him planting evidence (the gun) that would be much better left a mystery by throwing it overboard. Any evidence is much more dangerous in the possibility of being traced to him, rather than being useful in framing someone else. AND he has the PERFECT disposal area in the form of the open sea, but the writers would rather include the "frame up angle" to add drama.
- The whole angle of the GLOVES is used by the writers for HUGE jumps in logic and circumstance. The gloves COULD be any type, other than surgical, but Colombo has to insist there is no other option. Anyone ever hear of work gloves, costume gloves (for the showroom perfumers), wait staff gloves in the dining room, bad weather gloves for the crew, food service gloves in the kitchen, formal dining gloves with the guests, etc...
And MOST implausible, Colombo INSISTS he's "searched the entire ship" for the missing gloves, and he cannot find them. Yet even he refers specifically to the fact that he's only searched areas of criminal interest, leaving about 95% of the REST OF THE SHIP unsearched.
- The murderer has NO reason to take Colombo's bait to steal and plant the gloves with the powder burns - NONE. Is he trying to really "sell" the writers' lame frame-up story line? Again, if he leaves well enough alone, he gets off the ship at the end of the cruise, and walks away. Of course the murderer blubbers into the end of episode confession, which as we all know never happens in real-life, but is a staple of television crime writing due to time constraints.
- Colombo jumps to the conclusion and information about the master key being created by a car dealer's key cutter a LOT faster than the more logical conclusion, which would be that it was simply stolen.
- The murderer's wife never visits him in the hospital at any time, or even more realistically stays with him the entire evening he's in his room. Most people in a marriage would do that, giving him no opportunity to leave the room at any time.
There's more wrong with this horrible story (script's okay, the story is bad) but I'm weary of pointing them all out. Again, enjoy the episode, but mock the story for the lazy, horrible effort it is.
And, Dean Stockwell has hilariously silly clown-style hair in this episode. Did someone actually style his hair that way for this production and tell him it looked good? Yikes!
Sam Whiskey (1969)
Definition: Late Sixties Star Vehicle
Many movies are produced for purposes other than artistic merit, or creative urge, so I'm not going to review the "quality" of this movie, as that is not its point. (Or maybe a I will... it's hard to avoid!) In 1969, movies were much more expensive to produce than today (as far as film stock, negatives, distribution, etc.), so major studio releases had to use certain stock genres, settings, and well known stars to get projects approved.
This is one of those projects, and it serves that purpose well. If you want to see Burt and Angie in their prime, having a good time making a movie, then this time capsule is for you. It bangs right along, with no slow spots, and it easy to consume and understand.
It's a great movie to watch for the flavor of sixties star driven action comedies, but it is very dated, and not well written. The dialog is basic, and the plot such as it is, exists just to string together action sequences. This movie never was never intended to be good, bad, or indifferent. It was supposed to sell tickets and refreshments when people wanted to get out for the evening.
But that's fine - it did its job when it needed to, but skip it unless you're interested in the culture of the time when the movie was made, it doesn't stand alone as a movie of the genre worth watching.
Louis Theroux's African Hunting Holiday (2008)
Anti Captive Hunting Reviewers - Take a pill or something, He's on your side.
Yo, over enthusiatic anti-captive hunting reviewers, there was NO WAY that anyone can watch this show and not be against stupid captive hunting. And that's exactly what Louis portrayed. He looked physically ill most of the show, and at no point did he not push people to explain why they would do such a cruel and useless thing.
Just because he didn't do a hard hitting documentary as you wish, doesn't make it a problem.
He wasn't trying to show facts and figures like you want, he just did a great job of showing the ignorance and insensitivity of the participants. When he asked some of them what their limits were, and they had NONE - that gets the point across pretty well.
Go watch it again, and try to figure out your allies better next time.
Columbo: Murder Under Glass (1978)
Lazy Writing and even more horrendously Lazy Production Values - very slight spoiler at end
BAD WRITER, BAD WRITER - down boy, down.
Although I enjoy the Columbo series from a production/entertainment standpoint, the scripts are sometimes HILARIOUSLY "hollywood author" centric.
E.G. - The writer is obviously so fixated on the brilliance of their main concept. (The "murder twist" in this plot is EASILY determined in the first ten minutes of the episode. The only real surprise is that Columbo actually puts the suspect's life at risk to prove his POINT!) This particular episode is SUPPOSED to be themed along the lines of gourmet chefs. Yet the story is LACED with HORRENDOUSLY lay person-based ideas of what gourmet food is, and how gourmet restaurants work. REALLY BAD.
1. Secondary restaurants mentioned in the episode include "House of Choy" and "Chez Duval" (Which is basically "HOUSE OF DUVAL" HA, HA, HA!) Really lame effort - Not EVERY gourmet restaurant is called "House of X" - The writer REALLY needed to get out a little bit more - or LOOK IN A FREAKIN PHONE BOOK! Lazy.
2. The dialog refers to "Bechemel Sauce" not once, but TWICE - as some kind of exotic reference. Bechemel Sauce is just PLAIN WHITE SAUCE, as any basic research would have revealed. Though it is the basis for many dishes, It is FAR from an exotic gourmet reference. - To a chef (or even a laychef like myself) it's like saying - MMMM, did you use SALT? Too basic to be of interest to any professional. Anybody's GRANDMA knows what Bechemel Sauce is.
Just because the word sounds "fancy" to a layperson, it still sounds stupid to anyone who has ever opened a Betty Crocker cookbook.
3. Most of the "dishes" shown and served are NOT gourmet food, but rather "exotic dreams" from the Sara Lee or Betty Crocker hostesses' party guide of 1971. Really BAD looking stuff in the form of a bunch of mousses of whatever, meatloaves molded into various shapes, and big indescribable mounds of glop. Nothing that uses a fresh piece of meat or individual vegetable pieces, or any kind of fresh ingredients are shows.
YES, even in the sixties and seventies, gourmet food was good individual elements, NOT blended loaves of goop. The colors were horrendous as well.
And a few other "layperson" dishes fly through once in awhile as well, cornish game hens, caviar (on horrifying little biscuits), fois gras (on same biscuits), etc.
It's exactly as if the writer had read an Ian Fleming book for his reference on gourmet food, rather than actually researching it himself.
This HUGE breakdown in reality unfortunately spoils the episode, as nothing else is believable as well.
4. And lastly, this is yet ANOTHER of the dozens of Columbo plots where he has absolutely NO PROOF of the crime, and has to resort to trying to get the murder to try to kill Columbo in a fit of panic. (Even though he has no proof - why don't these people just laugh and leave the room?) How this won an award of some kind is a "mystery" to me - I'm not that big a mystery fan, and I had the murder method figured out nearly immediately.
Oh well, must be nice to be connected in Hollywood.
Columbo: Forgotten Lady (1975)
Semi-Spoiler - Nice touching ending, but usual "concrete" conclusion that isn't!
I really was surprised and touched by the ending to this one. Nice.
However, the writing does have one of the traditional "rail-straight" plot lines that forces reality to fit Columbo's conclusions.
Specifically, the part where the Lt. says there are "only four" possibilities for the Movie Veteran's actions during the broken film sequence. He insists that she either did nothing for a period of time (the time that the movie broke and concluded later than usual - two hours after starting instead of 1:45), or spent the time killing her husband.
Truly a plot hole of Canyonesque proportions. She could very well have been doing anything from taking a phone call, to getting a sweater, to taking a big steaming dump in the bathroom. Or she might have just nodded off for a momentary nap. It was late at night in the story.
The ending was sweet, but I really dislike when the Detective's solution is proposed as the "only possible" conclusion when in reality there were an infinite number of possibilities. The story could've been tighter.