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lucyrfisher
Reviews
Dixon of Dock Green: The Roaring Boy (1956)
Dramatic early episode
It's not just National Service that makes this a snapshot of a forgotten past. Dougie, the deserter (Kenneth Cope) talks about the way he feels when waving a gun about. He's illiterate, can't bear authority, unstable, has been violent before to Diana.
But it was fashionable to try to "understand" "juvenile delinquents" back then. George Dixon prevails with patients and solid dignity.
Everybody acts well, including the old lady (escapee from The Ladykillers?) who is very worried about local pent-up dogs and skinny donkeys.
Some early episodes survive as radio plays, and they are worth a listen!
La monaca di Monza (1962)
Odd sidelight into how London has changed
There used to be a porn cinema right on Piccadilly. In my memory this film was always playing, along with Danish Dentist on the job. All I knew about it were the lurid posters on the storefront. After 50 years, I looked up her story today - she was a real character. Part of her "awful story" is the way her father and other family members did her out of an inheritance and forced her to become a nun. Wikipedia opines that she was never tortured, just shown the instruments, but she did spend 13 years "walled up", or rather imprisoned in a convent cell. Read her story! It really is pretty dreadful.
River Patrol (1948)
Enjoyed it
Lorna Dean is blowsily excellent as Jean, the undercover copy. I love this brief era just after the war, before Christian Dior's benighted "New Look" made all women look middle-aged.
She and John Blithe (Robby) infiltrate a club where illicit nylons are being smuggled in in laundry baskets. The club is a bit dodgy, too - no gambling allowed back in them days. Jean's job is mainly to persuade men to buy black market whisky, while she puts away neat gin. As a "hostess" perhaps it was just peppermint cordial?
Due to budget constraints the action is up close and snappy. The film ends with a fight that really looks like a fight - a lot of flailing about and missed biffs to the head.
Look out for it.
Columbo: Suitable for Framing (1971)
Murder considered as one of the fine arts
Kim Hunter had few movie credits? She was David Niven's girlfriend in A Matter of Life and Death.
Others have outlined the plot. It's a running Hollywood joke that art collectors own recognisable original works by the old masters. Rembrandt's Saskia as Flora, eg. The head of a child by ?Reynolds.
It's nice to see Mary Wickes as a garrulous landlady, but there's too much fussing about a canary. Don Ameche is good as the lawyer.
But ex-wife Elvira, played by Kim Hunter - is she supposed to be a bit fey, suffering early-onset Alzheimer's, charmingly ditsy? Often she just comes across as dim. Would you bequeath a fabulously valuable art collection to this woman?
If Dale Kingston stops renting the house, where's she going to put the pictures? She's going to have to shell out thousands for insurance. She'd better sell off the odd Rubens to fund the artistic giveaway. And what school is going to be able to insure a Velasquez, and pay for security? She'd better break the will and sell them all!
Foyle's War: High Castle (2015)
Like this episode
Madeleine Potter is excellent as Mrs Del Mar - but would she really have a bunch of the keys to the entire house on hand - on a kitchen dresser? Note, she is trapped as much as Sam is.
As Sam struggles to open the gates, Arthur appears and holds a gun to Del Mar's head. "How did you get in?" asks Sam. "Piece of cake!" he replies. We never find out how he did it. Never mind, I like Arthur's character, well played by Tim McMullan.
There has never been another Foyle's War. Notice how Anthony Horowitz exposes the concentration camps (here deserted) obliquely.
Sam says one of her favourite authors is Agatha Christie, and Christie contributes the "secret papers hidden behind a picture" dodge. In fact there's more than an echo of Secret Adversary.
Rumpole of the Bailey: Rumpole and the Man of God (1979)
Rumpole defends a vicar and confronts several moral problems
It's always a plus to have character actor Derek Farr in the cast. Here he's a vicar with a conscience who's had up for shoplifting in a dreary department store with cheap shirts on sale and an overlit "hall of food". He lives with a protective sister.
George meanwhile has got engaged to a Mrs Ida Tempest. At dinner at the Rumpoles Hilda's face is a picture as Ida admires her champagne glasses. "Export rejects from the Army and Navy!"
There is a Holmesian moment when Rumpole goes through an old deed box containing mementoes of his great cases. Who was murdered with that oriental dagger of curious design?
The vicar seems doomed. Only a miracle can save him. And lo! Judge Bullingham undergoes a sudden change of character. Perhaps it was the dog collar. Or perhaps the lack of evidence.
George is made a judge, but his engagement is off - Ida turns out to have done three years for arson.
A great, sparkling, witty episode with some genuine moral puzzlers.
Murder at 3am (1953)
Potential lost
Alway happy to see inside a 50s nightclub where people seem to be having a much better time than in the disco era. However we nearly always have to sit through a drippy song in full. Here it is sung by Dennis Price's girlfriend, who is treated with indifference and disappears halfway through the movie. We also get to see some 50s fashions and huge fur coats.
There's an unfortunate character called "Old Skip" who speaks some strange unknown dialect ("it is not that which I would be thinking", etc). He is also fuelled by brandy and this is considered to be a hilarious joke. However, his knowledge of the river is useful.
Final goof - no half-timbered building would be right on the river after the building of the Embankment. Oh, perhaps as far upstream as Chiswick...
Yes, the final twist is really silly.
Now Barabbas (1949)
Portmanteau prison drama
Someone suggested that the story is set during the war - this would explain the way the Irish saboteur is painted as a villain of the deepest dye. It is even suggested that he is gay. His friend, a rather dim young dancer, is transferred to another prison. He is last seen making friendly advances to Ronald Howard, son of Leslie and not a bad actor.
Stephen Murray, later known for the Navy Lark, is serious here and good as a Welsh padre. Cedric Hardwicke is as dependable as we would expect as the sympathetic governor. William Hartnell is the harsh screw with moments of compassion.
The man in the condemned cell fails to get a reprieve - and we see the effect that the judicial killing has on staff and prisoners alike. It's suggested that they will all suffer permanent damage.
The Real...: Fanny Cradock (1998)
I remember this being very funny
It lifted the casserole lid on Fanny Cradock, TV chef known for cookery demos in full evening dress. She went through husbands, not bothering to divorce them, and abandoned her children. She and Johnny pretended to be married for years. Old friends such as Tenniel Evans dish the dirt. Her own kitchen was a mess. She'd give a huge party every year "Just 200 of my closest friends" with a different cast every time. Her makeup was stuck in the 30s, but she was a fixture on our screens, demonstrating elaborate, fussy food with French names. Her downfall came when she sent up an amateur cook who had won a competition to devise a menu. She pulled faces and pretended to gag. Nobody laughed. In fact they protested, and the BBC threw her out on her ear.
Columbo: Death Lends a Hand (1971)
Keeps you wondering
Well, I kept wondering how I'd find a contact lens in an olive green shag pile rug... Put it in the bath? How would you stop it going down the drain? Drape it over a washing line and beat it gently - with a sheet underneath, of course... But then he doesn't want to find it, just get rid of it.
As others said, a very good and stylish episode. (Though why must they have people EATING - yuk!) Thankfully, not too much "humour".
Ray Milland is great, especially when confronted by his wife's body. "I just want to get out of here."
And I can watch tall, thin Robert Culp for ever. Fortunately he lived to murder many more people on Columbo!
Columbo: The Greenhouse Jungle (1972)
And now the orchid greenhouse
Someone pointed out that these detective series (Perry Mason, Murder She Wrote, Columbo) take us behind the scenes in the theatre, concert hall, opera, winery, restaurant, hospital, high-profile chess tournament, racing stables - and the orchid greenhouse. The writer of this episode also wrote 23 Perry Mason stories, and perhaps the orchids are an homage to Raymond Burr, who really was an orchid grower and breeder - he named one variety after Barbara Hale. His partner ran the winery.
Here the great Ray Milland is the "heavy who loves beauty" (Vincent Price's words), admiring orchids while conspiring to kill of his relatives "and then there was one". Of course there is money to get hold of.
I am rather depressed at the way other reviewers point out where the "humour" lies, in case we missed it. Here Columbo gathers pace down a hill and falls over - a genuine accident that was kept in. Not at all humorous. Keen, pop-eyed Freddie Wilson IS funny, however, and I'm glad to see he came back for another episode. Bradford Dillman, though handsome, just looks pathetic as the cuckolded rich boy and is inflicted with the most terrible hairstyle. If he lived on a trust fund, how come he had a receptionist? I heard no trace of her supposed Brooklyn accent, and I'm always listening out for them.
Dixon of Dock Green: A Slight Case of Love (1975)
Good story about female con artists
Moira Redmond has several older boyfriends (how did she meet them? Did she advertise?) who want to marry her. "I'd love to, but mother... Homes are so expensive!" One by one the boyfs hand over large cheques.
The Dock Green squad are visited by one of the jilted and bilked middle-aged men, and get on her case. This means they look up some old friends, like Mela White who is writing a kiss-and-tell memoir, and an "actress" in Fitzrovia who is planning a con of a different kind. Plus we get to drive around London's bedsit-land of the 70s.
I'm catching up on old episodes and am impressed by the interesting stories, wit, good acting and even a bit of social satire.
Columbo: Any Old Port in a Storm (1973)
There's always one set in a winery
And I usually avoid them because they tend to be populated by bad Italian accents and gesticulation. Here Donald Pleasance is only half Italian as a wine snob of wine snobs who's not interested in making sordid money. There's one character called Giuseppe, but thankfully everybody calls him Rick.
Oh, that's another reason I avoid winery episodes. There's all that guff about wine. And it's supposed to endear us to Donald Pleasance who is a villainous villain of the deepest dye. Plus he hams it up all over the place.
Oh yes, they namecheck the Poe story.
Julie Harris is compelling as the scheming secretary who almost gets her man. But would she ever feel safe?
Open All Night (1934)
Enjoyable and engaging
Well-filmed, crisp black-and-white movie about the goings-on at a thriving hotel. The central character is Anton, played by Frank Vosper - formerly a Russian Grand Duke. When he walks out on "stage" he straightens his shoulders and is an imposing, even military figure. But his bosses think the time has come for him to retire. He's just got one more shift to work.
The beautiful Geraldine Fitzgerald is being blackmailed by her creepy boss, tho she is the fiancée of one of the waiters. A couple waits anxiously for a friend to bring the money he owes them so that they can travel to Vienna and consult a specialist. Anton treats his neighbour Maisie to a slap-up dinner. She's grateful: "I auditioned for Hip Hip Hooray. They liked the hooray but weren't so sure about the hips." (Talking of hips, most of the female extras are a bit broad in the beam. And they wear floppy hats with evening dress!)
Anton acts like the "third-floor back" in the play of the same name and sorts out everybody's problems - except his own. When given the sack, he tells the manager the generous pension won't be needed. He keeps his word.
The League of Gentlemen (1960)
Let's rerun the war
I love movies where a team of disparate characters come together to ... do anything, really. Here they want to rob a bank. Jack Hawkins has been retired from the army, and he recruits some specialists whose finest hour was in the military, even if that finest hour consisted of selling secrets to the Russians or much, much worse.
The gang hole up for training in Hawkins' run-down mansion, and there's a long sequence where they pose as top brass and get away with smoke bombs and machine guns. The writer (Bryan Forbes) has a lot of fun at the expense of the British army, showing it up as hidebound, hierarchical and thick-headed. But it's 1960 - doesn't this stuff belong in the 40s?
Yes, it's 1960, and the end of censorship is approaching. This means the scenes with women are embarrassingly "salacious". The nudge nudge wink wink is just cringey. There are some lines that fall flat, like Roger Livesey saying he always came forward at revival meetings. Were they meant to contain a sexual innuendo that passes us by? Other oddly grating moments: Oliver Reed doing a "Julian and Sandy", and the one gay character being a former Mosley supporter.
I thought one of the gang would betray the others, or employ the smoke bombs to grab the whole loot, but no...
Columbo: Forgotten Lady (1975)
Sunset Boulevard revisited
Grace Wheeler, planning a comeback, watches her own old movies, projected by her faithful butler, Raymond (Maurice Evans). John Payne as her ex-partner looks faintly like Fred Astaire, and the reason for their break-up is sketched in - his drink problem and car accident. He is very good, as is Evans, who has a wife with an indistinguishable foreign accent.
It is even more poignant that the old movies Grace watches are drivel. Old songs given a contemporary - now desperately dated - swing. John Payne mentions in passing that they might revive Lady in the Dark instead of the run-of-the-mill show they are working on. When the two leads waltz at a party they are dancing to Speak Low when you Speak Love from Lady in the Dark by Kurt Weill. Nobody mentions this - and the composer doesn't get a credit!
Columbo: Strange Bedfellows (1995)
Might have been better if Dick Francis had written it
Oh no, let's humiliate Columbo and make him allergic to clams. One reviewer said this sub-plot made the episode worth watching. I fast forwarded. Suddenly Columbo can't speak Italian when meeting a mafia boss. Is he just pretending, so that he can listen to their conversations? If so, why does he not recognise the word "vongole" - clams?
The surrounding story is OK and well-acted by the barman, receptionist, restaurateur, hysterical lady and a mouse.
Rod Steiger is brilliant as the mafia boss. It's a treat to watch and listen, even if his Italian is suspiciously clear and "first steps in". (Don't the mafia communicate in Sicilian dialect?)
Columbo: It's All in the Game (1993)
I hate it when the writers embarrass Columbo
Cringing is the new laughing? To me it's just cringing. I fast forwarded over the flirtation. However, I liked the guys in the bar who act as a Greek chorus as Columbo updates them on the case.
She killed her two-timing lover? "What took her so long????"
Anyone who has seen Chinatown will work out the identity of the younger woman (very well acted).
Enjoy Miss Dunaway's gowns and general glamour. She makes the present look drab.
The ending is a bit of a cliché, but I'm sure you'll agree that Columbo did the right thing.
Does he turn up with a boiled egg and a cup of coffee in this one? I feel I've seen that trope a few too many times.
Maigret: Les petits cochons sans queue (2004)
Enjoyable episode
I really enjoyed this episode - partly because I wasn't tutting over needless diversions from the original plot. I am a Simenon superfan and I don't remember this book - or was it a short story? Everyone is good, especially Mme Blanc and her sinister father.
We must be in the South, because there are palm trees and the sun shines, and the useless local inspector calls the missing man "M'sieur Bleng". His accent probably locates the story for French speakers - like setting a story in Scotland. The young cop who assists Maigret complains that his pickpocket pal is incomprehensible - "Can't understand a word he says". Perhaps because he comes from the north.
Watch it, it's good. Also gives an insight into the crooked world of French boxing.
Dick Barton Strikes Back (1949)
Enjoyable
Dick Barton is the English gent, and Snowy is the Common Man - that's what he's doing there! I warmed to him, even if his jokes aren't very funny. He gets the "Cor blimey guv what a shower" type of dialogue.
I loved Fouracada (the villain)'s description of the lethal effects of unlimited electrical power and a GIANT TUNING FORK! He is indeed an effective villain as others have said.
And yes, the fight scenes are simply appalling! The sonic weapon wails for about ten minutes (I turned the sound down and the subtitles on).
Tragic that Don Stannard was killed in a car accident while travelling with Sebastian Cabot (Fouracada). Cabot survived - hopefully to play more criminal masterminds.
Columbo: Murder, A Self Portrait (1989)
Unusual for several reasons
Oh, so we have to have some "comedy". I fast forward whenever Dog appears. But apart from him...
As others have said, the music is great. Opera is the soundtrack to Vito's Bar, where the artist and his first wife used to live. But what opera are they singing in Louise's nightmares? I'd love to hear the whole work! The nightmare scenes are very well done, with the artist and Columbo in monochrome in the background.
The psychologist is dignified, and tho Freud's theories are largely baloney, good use is made of them. A French uncle? Mon oncle? A Mon... ocle? Earlier there's been some chat about a monocled art dealer who disappeared - "went back to Europe".
He was "very English" apparently, wore a bowler and often called people "old chap". What a shame! No Englishman had behaved like that since about 1910.
The three bickering women are good, especially when the remaining two make it up in the sauna over a bottle of white. Bauchau is good as the utterly horrible Barsini, redeemed only by his skill. His paintings are by an art director, and his portrait of Columbo is genius!
Columbo: A Stitch in Crime (1973)
Nice episode, shame about the "comedy"
Great to have Leonard Nimoy and Anne Francis - we really feel it when she's bumped off early on. Good plot, great mystery - howdunnit? But then we have to have the "laughs". No, please no. Columbo hates injections and nearly throws up/passes out. Spare us. We have to humiliate him by making him scoff a plateful of buffet food while grilling Nimoy - I fast-forwarded.
Nita Talbot's interview with Columbo is truly funny, however. She comes out with a dictionary full of psychological clichés of the time. What would her speech sound like today? And she admits she moved to the hospital from a private clinic because she only ever meets men who need facelifts.
I've just remembered when Leonard Nimoy appeared on a breakfast radio talk show here in London. The interviewer got his name wrong (think he called him "Nemo") and said: "Star Trek - that was just a three-year gig for you, wasn't it?" Unbelievably rude! Can't remember what Nimoy replied. He was a good actor and a nice man - a friendly presence on Twitter, ending all tweets with "LLAP", until he was taken from us.
Columbo: Columbo Likes the Nightlife (2003)
Dark, edgy, dark
The scene-setting is very dark. The despatch of the tabloid journalist, suggested by the rusty radiator ripping away from the wall... grim. And the first (accidental) victim is last seen under a thick glass coffee table (foreshadowing his eventual fate) but then just disappears. The gardeners heaving about planters with trees are a red herring.
Mr Schirripa as the mafia emissary is genial in a terrifying kind of way, but somewhere there is a man who's lost his son.
Not my kind of music or partying, but the ambience is impressive. The guilty pair do a good acting job. There's a suggestion that Justin, who'll do anything for a fast buck, is just another mutation of the traditional mobsters back in New York.
Farewell, Lieutenant Columbo. Glad you went out on a high.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Atmospheric
I love the 1979 version so much I didn't think I could bear to watch the film. But I became hooked. The locations are perfect (though the air is filled with the fog or is it talcum powder that blurred life in the past). Interiors are larger - and papered with hideous Vymura.
Casting is brilliant. Oldman, Cumberbatch, Firth, "Trigger", Kathy Burke. Ricky Tarr, damaged and sleazy, is more convincing than Hywel Bennett. (Though why does Peter attack him?)
It's no longer 1979, and we need - or do we? - gore and sex. I could have done without the gore. Would it even be safe for the Russians to slaughter a couple of men (one of theirs, one of ours) before exiting with Irina. And we never hear what happens to her, unless that was in a bit I fast forwarded.
A lot of the dialogue was from the 1979 version - even some of the gestures and facial expressions. And much of the dialogue, of course, was written by Le Carré.
It would be hard for someone who had never read the book or seen the 1979 version to follow the plot, but never mind.
The drabness of the 1970s on both sides of the Curtain was perfectly invoked. Smiley re-enacts his meeting with Carla, in close-up. We've both seen the flaws in each other's position - what's to choose between them? Why not switch?
I couldn't help thinking that all the cast had been irreparably damaged by being sent away to boarding school aged seven. At one point Ricky says "I want a family - I don't want to be like you lot!"
Columbo: Murder with Too Many Notes (2001)
Good in parts
Billy Connolly is good as the film composer. His conducting looks convincing. I didn't spot who wrote the music, but it is fabulous - more Hermann than Williams.
Downsides: if Connolly merely drugged his young protégée (who has been writing all his music while he hits the bottle), why does the boy gag and gasp as if there was cyanide in that champagne? What knockout drops work that fast?
I fast forwarded over the "name that tune" segment. Some people call it "humour" or "comedy" but to me it is Columbo being humiliated and I can't bear it.
And what was the point of the driving scene? Fast forwarded over that one, too. It seemed interminable. What's funny about driving slowly? Or having an old, beat-up car? Roll on the 15-minute city and Americans getting out of their cars and - gasp! - walking!