Gossip - 2000

I rather like it, even if it has tough stuff, but it is not morbid; it has stupid moments and the attention is all on the three protagonists and on the gossip, th power of words. 

Jones is a studious girl, but her friends, who are also her roommates, are a great temptation towards going out and have fun.

Jones and Travis live with Derrick in his apartment, he’s rich and likes to have fun and change girls as he wants. During a lesson with professor Goodwin, Derrick says that there’s no difference between gossip and news, that people gossip and when enough people say it it becomes religion, stuff like that. Sadly, thta’s kinda true.

He also adds that he likes gossip, it’s fun. 

So, the three friends decide on a project for this class: to spread a gossip and track its life and growth. When they go out that night they see Naomi and Beau. She’s rich and with an important dad, and has a reputation of never having sex. 

Jones does not like her because she’s rich but also because she thinks that Naomi spread a rumour about her and professor Goodwin. 

Both Travis and Derrick say that they don’t know her. Derrick sees Naomi and Beau, by chance, when they are alone and, it seems, about to have sex. We see that Naomi is totally drunk but still saying no quite clearly, and then we see Beau going out, so that the audience can have the doubt on what happened. Because we didn’t actually see what happened between them.

Derrick convinces his friends to spread the gossip that they had sex, and they accept because he tells them that they didn’t, that it’s an obvious lie. Jones tells a girl that Naomi and Beau did it the night before, and before long the story reaches lows never imagined.

When Naomi hears about it, she’s upset, she doesn’t remember,and she starts believing that he took advantage of her. Her friends say he looked all smug when his friends asked him about it, so Naomi goes to the police. She explains and they arrest Beau.

Travis looks totally lost on his “art”, obsessed with Naomi and this gossip business, while Jones is now worried. Things have already gone too far, in her opinion. Still, Travis wants to trust Derrick while Derrick says that maybe there’s a reason if Naomi went to the police, maybe Beau really did it, would Jones let him get away with it? This also upsets Jones, because Derrick had assured them that Naomi and Beau did NOT in fact have sex that night, it was the decisive point that started it all.

Jones talks to Naomi, trying to learn why she accused Beau so “easily”, but as soon as Jones mentions Derrick’s name, Naomi goes ballistic and throws her out. No Jones i like: Derrick, you said you don’t know her, but you went to the same high school! He insists that people remember him but he doesn’t remember them. They have sex (because Jones always wanted him, but never wanted to ruin their friendship before). The next day Jones is still upset, so she goes to that high school to ask questions. She learns that Derrick and Naomi were together, and the whole school/city thinks that Derrick raped her. When Jones confronts him, he says she wanted it but then she freaked out and didn’t want her dad to know about it. 

Jones tells the truth to detective Kelly, but she doesn’t believe her because she “heard” that Jones has a crush on Beau and thinks that she wants to protect him. Derrick’s work, we can guess.

Jones tries to talk to Travis, to Naomi… she needs help.

This, I guess, is when it all starts.

Jones tells Derrick that she gives up but that the funny thing is that Naomi will never know… so that night Derrick has a fist fight with Beau, and then he goesto Naomi’s room to tell her that it was all his doing, he was there and he saw that Beau didn’t touch her. He also says: “both times, it was me”.

They fight, she scratches his face and bites his hand. He takes a picture of her and goes out (meaning a picture already made, he left there the broken frame and took only the picture).

Travis saw him going out, and next day Travis tells Jones and Derrick that Naomi is dead, she killed herself, “it’s all over campus”. Jones feels guilty, Derrick says that she was weak.

When detective Curtis shows up at his door and says that they’re investigating it as a possible murder, he gets worried, says he didn’t see her, lies about the scratch. Jones says she was asked questions and she didn’t lie, she said he went there that night. Then Derrick tries to get Travis to lie for him, say he went there himself and Naomi gave him her picture, the one he took. 

Jones goes to ask the professor’s help. In class, the professor says that Derrick spread that rumour, and people start talking about him, saying it was his fault, that he killed her. Derrick tried to say that it was Jones that spread it, but it doesn’t work. He finds the detective at home, and is angry because Jones told Goodwin. When Curtis says that he found the picture in his room, Derrick tries to blame the whole thing on Travis. He shows Travis’ room to the detective, and his art, he says that Travis is obsessed, stalking her, that Travis is sick and demented, that he’s a psycopath.

Curtis says that he’ll investigate Travis, but he will also keep investigating Derrick, because his fingerprints are all over Naomi’s room, and there’s the scratch…which means his dna under her fingernails… Derrick tries to go away but Travis stops him. He has a gun, he feels betrayed and threatens him with the gun. Jones arrives to stop Travis, knowing he has a gun. Travis says if he lets him go, Derrick will get away with it. Derrick jumps on him and they fight, and Jones gets shot.

Derrick tells Travis to call 911, but Jones “dies”. Travis immediately says that the cops are still downstairs and will have heard the shot. He gets upset when Derrick tries to ‘get their stories straight’, and says he should tell the police that he (Derrick) killed her. There’s a bit of yelling back and forth, and then Derrick shouts that he did rape Naomi, that she deserved it, but he didn’t kill anybody. 

At this point, he sees that he’s been recorded, Jones is alive and well, and so is Naomi. She’s there with Beau, and there’s also Goodwin, Curtis and that gossipy-girl.

Curtis is actually Naomi’s dad’s driver, while the cop is a guy in Jones’ “calc class”. Beau says Jones approached him with the plan, and he was the one filming everything. Everyone goes out, leaving him alone in his apartment. Derrick now wonders: “what are people gonna think? What are they gonna say about me?” And Travis repeats his own words back at him: “it’s only words. How bad can it be?” and then they leave.

P.s. Naomi knew nothing about the rumou involving Jones and the professor. 

Beau left Naomi alone at the club, passed out in that room alone…he didn’t touch her, but he’s a bit responsible anyway, the idiot. He could have at least called some girls up to check on her, or something. Stupid idiot.

Derrick Webb - James Marsden

Cathy Jones - Lena Headey

Travis - Norman Reedus

Naomi Preston - Kate Hudson

Professor Goodwin - Eric Bogosian

Detective Curtis - Edward James Olmos

Beau Edson - Joshua Jackson

Detctive Kelly - Sharon Lawrence

Eraser - 1996

It wasn’t bad! Watching it now and comparing with modern action movies, it wasn’t bad you know, it was a good movie.

John Kruger is an Eraser, he works for the FBI and protects witnesses, people who have to testify. He does it by ‘stopping’ all the killers and then making them disappear, giving these witnesses new identities. 

The movie opens with him saving a man and his wife, and his next job is a girl, Miss Lee Cullen, who went to the FBI with some burocracy and got involved in a big mess of people selling weapons outside of the national military, making it high treason. 

Lee made two copies of the disc she copied, one she kept for herself following the advice of a journalist friend who will be killed for it. Lee’s ex is killed as well, and she’s saved by John just in time. He gets her to a safe location, but then he finds out that the mole in thei department is his old friend and mentor Robert Deguerin. Robert kills an agent with John’s gun to make it look like John’s the mole, then he goes after Lee, but she received John’s brief message of alarm and disappeared, plus he warned her that he works alone, so when a man finds her and tells her that John sent him, she does what he told her to do and shoots him, injuring him enough to get away. John arrives and sets two crocodiles on the guys (but then he has to kill one crocodile himself because it wouldn’t let him go). They were at the zoo, of course. 

John phones his captain Beller to warn him about Robert but he needs proof because the captain doesn’t know who to believe, and John is the one running…

He asks for Johnnie’s help, the man he saved at the beginning who promised to repay him. He now works as a bartender in a drag queen club, and agrees right away. They manage to get inside her company to read the disc she copied, and they do it, but then they lose the disc, have to run and Robert kidnaps Lee. 

John and Johnnie go after them, this night there will be the big delivery of weapons to international mafia dealers. 

They shoot at him with a super rifle and only manage to injure him indirectly. But nothing will stop him. Of course.

Lee manages to free herself but can’t run far and Robert gets her again. John saves her. She also tried to help him. 

Robert is alive, though, and when the trial starts, he plans to make it look like he was the patriot who stopped the bad guys or something, and of course he still plans to kill Lee, the key witness. 

Bu John knows this, and instead, with Johnnie’s help, he locks them in their car and they’ll get killed in the crash with an incoming train.

The end for them and for the movie.

I liked this Lee character, very well done. No romance, greatly appreciated, but a hearty hu when they made it out alive. She was brave and smart, I liked her a lot. 

I also liked Johnnie enough, he kinda looked like Brignano :lol

Donahue was Lee’s direct boss, who shoots himself when he understands that the FBI is involved. 

Eraser - Arnold Schwarzenegger

Lee - Vanessa Williams

Deguerin - James Caan

Beller - James Coburn

Johnny C - Robert Pastorelli

Donahue - James Cromwell

ITA L’eliminatore

Baywatch - 2017

 This was ridiculous. Kinda funny, but mostly ridiculous. It’s ok because it seems clear to me that that’s what they were aiming for, really, and rightly so. They were right in doing it this way, but I don’t think it was advertized the right way when it came out. I thought it was more serious, more like the series, so I wasn’t really interested. I watched it now just out of curiosity, and from the start you can see the atmosphere of this movie, when Mitch’s head comes out of the water and behind him booms the title in big letters, with dolphins around, something like that. That was cool, and set the mood for the whole thing, well done. 

So, I watched it without much expectations, and I kinda liked it. We have all the old characters names, but with different actors and stories. We have Mitch, the leader. There’s CJ, beautiful and silly, and nerd Ronnie who joins them because he’s in love with her. There’s Stephanie the serious one and Summer with the big tits. Then there’s Matt Brody, who won two gold medals swimming but then started drinking, lost, got in trouble, and now is on probation, to join the lifeguards as a kind of community service. He’s arrogant and not one to play for a team, at first, but of course they’ll win him over and he’ll become one of them 100%.They don’t just rescue people from drowning, they also catch thieves on the beach and stuff like that, and right now Mitch is very worried about a drug called flakka or something like that. 

Rich Victoria wants to buy all the land and she deals that drug. She bribes a councilman but when he doesnn’t come through and fails she has him killed. Then she has her men abduct Mr Chen who won’t sell to her, but eventually they’ll saev him. Mitch, Summer and Matt break into the Morgue to look at the councilman’s body, and because of this Mitch is fired, and Matt is in command. He now wants to follow Mitch’s lead and so he keeps investigating. Mitch tries to work in a tech store (lol) until his mentor Mitch sets him right (yes, the real Mitch).

Matt and Summer find out where Victoria keeps the drugs and what she wants to do. They save Mr Chen and try to stop her with fireworks… and eventually blow her up with a firework/cannon that Mitch aims at her.

At the end, the local cop apologises for not helping them since they were right, Matt wins Summer over and Ronnie gets CJ. 

Mitch has his job back and Casey Jean makes a cameo appearance to show everyone that she’s always the blondest. The end :-p

Mitch Buchannon - Dwayne Johnson

Matt Brody - Zac Efron

Victoria Leeds - Priyanka Chopra

Summer Quinn - Alexandra Daddario

CJ Parker - Kelly Rohrbach

The Mentor - David Hasselhoff

Casey Jean Parker - Pamela Anderson

Babylon - 2022

 This is Manny’s story. I’vve never heard of this Diego Calva, everybody said ‘the movie with Brad Pitt and margot Robbie’, but he’s the main protagonist here, and then there’s Nellie, Margot’s character. 

I didn’t llike this movie; it’s done well enough, it’s a big story, but it’s not for me. Those big parties only look paathetic to me, if you can’t have fun without drugs then you’re not having fun at all because that’s all fake. 

Manny is the son of Mexican immigrants who wants to work in the cinematic industry, be part of something big. 

Nellie is a lost girl as much as she is a wanna-be star, and she emphasizes the second to forget the first.

They meet at a producer’s party. At this time he wors or this Don Wallach Nellie crashes her car against a statue or something, and the security guy wants to send her away because she’s not a guest, but Manny gets her inside. She immdiately asks about drugs, and it ys everything that he just opens a door listing all  the different drugs that can be found in the room…

Nellie starts dancing like she’s possessed - and she is, by cocaine.

There’s even a jazz band, poor guys look so out of place in a circle of hell like that: everybody is so full of drugs, and alcohol, there’s so many walking or dancing completely naked, there’s people doing it right there in front of others, honestly I can’t say if it’s more disgusting or pathetic. 

When a young actress needs to be taken to the hospital, Manny’s help is asked and he suggests using the elephant, the surprise of the party, as a distraction to bring her out. Nellie is randomly chosen to take her place in the movie.

Manny is totally fascinated by this girl who isn’t just pretty, but she’s also wild and a force of nature.

He tells her he fell in love with her, but she just moves on. 

It’s 1926 and their lives change: Nellie starts acting in a silent movie, and she can cry on command - “I just think of home” - she immediately steals every scene and becomes a star. 

She will also cause a production company to shut down after she learned that the money came from Constance Moore’s company (she was her co-star, who was the real star before her and still wanted to be…)

After that big party, Manny is asked to help Jack and take him home becase he drank so much he passed out. Manny does, and by doing this his life changes, because Jack takes a liking to him and wants Manny to go with him on set. Manny takes care of a strike and manages to get them a new camera after the last one is broken, and so he starts his career. 

In 1927 Jack hears of a talking picture, and sends Manny to New York to check it out: indeed by people’s reaction he can tell that that’s the future. He also meets Nellie again, and they talk, and we see that her mother is in a sanatorium there. Her father has taken over as her manager ever since her first success.

With sound, everything changs and new problems arise. Any small noise risks ruining a scene. A guy, Billy, dies because they wouldn’t let him breathe…

Nellie still works with director Ruth, Jack has a new wife and Sidney still plays with his group at their parties. 

Nellie is always wearing very little, and her dear dad says “a little more attire’s always in the way. Nellie dresses low ‘cause Nellie is low” - how nice huh? Dead daddy indeed…

While Nellie is in the bathroom, she hears two men talking trash about her, how she’s nothing, awful; she dries her tears and goes out. Her dad was chatting up a girl with his famous snake story; she challenges him to do it again tonight and they all drive until they find a rattlesnake, but he passes out before he can do anything. Nobody would approach the snake of course, so she didit herself and the snake bit her neck. Nobody helped her or knew what to do until lady Fay killled the snake and sucked the venom out of her, saving her life. 

Nellie was so thankful that she fully kissed her.  

After Manny’s suggestion to put the orchestra and Sidney on set, Sidney becomes famous. Manny is approached and asked to leave MGM and go back to Kinoscope, to manage Nellie’s career among other things. Because times are changing, and “today’s audiences find her pornographic”, and she’s also gambling a lot, and “she sounds like a donkey”, so he accepts and has a whole plan to make her a sophisticated actress; she must be taught how to dress and how to speak. At first she’s all “I’m ready to change and I’ll do whatever you need”. Manny is very excited to be actually making movies.

1928. Sidney gets a big house and a big car. Manny has to fire Fay because there were pictures of her with Nellie that were causing rumours ad they were worried that Fay was damaging her image…

Jack is deeply hurt when he learns that George shot himself, he was a dear friend and the first one to tell him he had talent. Up until now Jack was always there to help him whenever he broke up with someone or whenever a girl didn’t want him, but this time George actually did it.

Here Jack does a nice speech to his theatre-actress wife, because movies are magic and are seen by millions of people, not just by a few rich people who can afford it.

it’s 1930. Manny ‘pulled a lot of strings’ to get Nellie invited to some rich people’s party. Elinor is there as always to advise her, but Nellie is a horror from the start. Whoever told her to kiss people’s hands, both male and females?

Manny plays his part well, and tells people that he’s Spanish, from Madrid, not Mexican), while Sidney mostly sits and lets people talk, but Nellie can’t do it. Despite what Elinor told her, she drinks a lot and as soon as they’re alone she yells at Manny that she can’t do it because they’re all awful and they don’t like her. Manny insists she can do it because they can save her career, and really hopes she can behave, but she soon explodes and starts swearing and insulting those people, and she stuffs her face which becomes all red,dirty llike in a vampire movie, and she even throws up. 

Jack’s latest movie was a total flop and the audience was laughing at him. 

Manny has to ask Sidney to darken his face because other musicians from the South have much darker skin than him and he looked white in comparison. Well, in a black-and-white movie he probably did.

Elinor wrote a piece on how Jack’s career is over, but also tells him that what he did has made him immortal, people will see his movies many many years from now. 

Nellie appears at Manny’s door all desperate because she kept gambling and she lost lots of money and now she owes gangster James McKay 85.000 dollars. That’s dangeroous people who might kill her for it, so Manny tells her to pay, for sure. She says she can’t. “You’re Nellie LaRoy. Of course you have the money” but she doesn’t, between her habits and her dad’s investments, she’s got nothing.

At first he loses it, of course, yelling in Spanish, and then saying that he’s always tried to help her and “all you’ve done is break my heart” but she begs him and of course he agrees to help her.

Jack is only offered bad parts in bad movies that will never be a hit.

Manny is looking for the money and asks for “the count”’s help, but only after they deliver the money and are face to face with McKay does he learn that it’s all prop money.

This McKay is a weird guy who has horrible ideas for movies and who takes them to the weirdest place to see a man eat a mouse alive.

Here McKay realises it’s fake money and Manny’s scared to death and reacts on instinct when he sees McKay’s man’s gun. Manny hits him with the first thing he can grab and then he runs.

People shoot but they get away and drive home. He leaves the Count home to get his stuff and he goes to get Nellie. It takes him a long time to have her understand that it’s serious, he wants her to go with him. 

Finally she seems to understand. Even after saying she’s no good for him, she says she’ll marry him. But then Manny stops to get the Count and when she’s alone in the car, she leaves. 

Of course. She could never do that, live that life, normally, be a wife… she’s too wild for that.

A killer finds Manny at the Count’s house and starts shooting. The Count and his roommate die, but by chance he’s still alive and he cries and begs and he’s so terrified he pissed himself… the killer must actually be moved by such a sight because he tells him to leave Los Angeles, go away. 

He does. Even without Nellie, he does.

We see that Sidney left the movies but is still playing at smaller venues. Fay has decided to leave for Europe. Jack is tired of the life he has now and shoots himself.

Elinor dies at 76 years of age, after leaving work. This is 1935.

In 1938 Nellie is found dead of overdose in a poor apartment.

In 1952 Manny comes back after making himself a life in New York. Now he has a shop selling radios, a wife and a daughter. He looks at the studios then goes to the cinema to watch Singing in the Rain, and he thinks of all that happened and he cries. 

The audience loves the movie and he sort of smiles, guess he still loves movies after all. Or he just remembers his youngdays with nostalgia, who knows.

I liked Fay who always kept her head on her shoulders and sent her money home to her family. I liked Sidney who chose dignity over fame. 

I don’t really agree with what I read about this movie, that in the end it was all worth it because they made movies that are magic and immortal and all that. There were deaths that were not worth it, no. Billy’s life was not worth it, just to make a movie. If they had just listened to him and let him breathe, instead of throwing him inside that oven… so no, not really “all” was worth it, and many people were awful and did terrible things.

Manny Torres - Diego Calva

Sidney Palmer - Jovan Adepo

Ellinor St John - Jean Smart

Nellie LaRoy - Margot Robbie

Jack Conrad - Brad Pitt

George Munn - Lukas Haas

Lady Fay Zhu - Li Jun Li

Robert Roy - Eric Roberts

James McKay - Tobey Maguire

The Addams family 2 - 1993

It had his moments, but I’m not too fond of what they made of the Addams in these movies. The best part of this one was Joan cusack, I liked every scene with her, and a few Wednesday moments, not really much of the rest.

The movie starts with Wednesday, Pugsley and their grandma burying a cat… alive…  :-/

Morticia is having a baby, like Right Now!, and they go to the hospital. Gomez is happy that it’s painful and a torture… although she doesn’t look it at all, she barely looks alive. It’s Thing that slaps the newborn to make it cry, and “it’s an Addams” is what Gomez says.

He arranged a “dark” and “depressing” room for the baby, to Morticia’s delight. 

Wednesday tells Pugsley that once a baby is born, one of the others must die, and “they only need one boy”. They throw the baby from the roof, hen Wednesday plays with theguillotine and wants to try it with the baby dressed as Marie antoinette, but the baby sops the bblade with a hand… they keep trying and trying…  sure, Gomez and Fester too hated each other as children, but this is going too far, so they want a nanny. The children scare away all of them, until Debbie.

The parents introduce Debbie to the children: “what do we say’” and Wednesday: “be afraid, be very afraid”.

We see on tv that she’s also Ursula, Carmen and Nadine, a black widow who marries rich men and kills them on the first night.

Debbie is officially there to keep Pubert the baby alive, but she doesn’t like children, so she convinces the parents that the kids want to go to “summer camp”: Camp Chippewa. The only thing on Wednesday’s mind is homicide. 

Brother and sister are united against those smiling/hugging people who think that they don’t hug because they’re shy. Pugsley:”we’re not shy” - Wednesday:”we’re contagious”.

Wednesday likes the other odd boy who is allergic to everything. 

Fester takes Gomez and Morticia along with him for his first date with Debbie. Gomez dances with Moricia while Fester puts things in his nostrils…  Debbie says she’s a virgin and wants to wait for her wedding night… and they get engaged, with the ring that was buried with their mother. 

At the party, we see that cousin Itt had a baby, and Lurch baked the cake for the stag night with the girl already inside…

I so didn’t like this, the original Addams were odd and peculiar, sure, but not heartless or serial-killery at all. 

Wednesday takes Joel to the wedding, and she’s the one who catches the bouquet… 

 On their honeymoon, Debbie tries to kill him but it’s not easy, so she has him promise never to see his family again. She spends his money on a big house full of stuff and changes his looks, and sends the Addams away when they come to see him…

Debbie puts a bomb to kill Fester: the house is destroyed but he’s alive. Tired of all this, Debbie shows her true colors telling him she doesn’t lilke him and only wants his money. Thing takes Fester away. 

Pubert got blond curls because of the shock of the separation, but now Fester is back home. 

Debbie followed him, with a shotgun.

At the camp, Wednesday, Pugsley and Joel are forced to watch a Disney marathon, at the end of which Wednesday cracks a smile, and it’s rather creepy… :) 

then they play their parts in the musical, as Pocahontas and a turkey. Only, they change the plot and burn the stage… then Pugsley and Wednesday run away, home. 

Debbie straps them all to electric chairs (they have a lot of those…). Pubert takes a knife and cuts himself free. 

Debbie has alway killed everyone who didn’t give her what she wanted, starting with her parents. Now she wants to fry them all, but Pubert falls from the sky and changes the power so she gets fried instead. 

Fester meets cousin Itt’s nanny Dementia, and likes her… basically she’s like a female Fester.

Joel comes to the party. Wednesday likes to scare him to death, poor guy. 

Morticia - Anjelica Huston
Gomez - Raul Julia
Fester - Christopher Lloyd
Debbie - Joan Cusack
Wednesday  -Christina Ricci
Pugsley - Jimmy Workman
Pubert - Kaitlyn and Kristen Hooper
Lurch - Carel Struicken

Joel - David Krumholtz

Gary Granger - Peter MacNicol

Becky Granger - Christine Baranski

Amanda - Mercedes McNab

Mr Glicker - Barry Sonnerfeld

Desk sergeant - Nathan Lane

Heather - Cynthia Nixon

Tv host - Peter Graves

Jorge - Tony Shalhoub

 

Big Foot by Edgar Wallace

 From 1927

This one wasn’t bad, it was an interesting read. Not my favourite, but a nice police story, I liked it enough. 

Jim is like a district attorney or something, and he’s in love with Elfa Leigh who works for Gordon Cardew as his secretary. There’s also Hannah Shaw working for Gordon, something like a housekeeper, whatever; one weekend she goes to the beach house alone, and there she dies, she’s found dead.

Gordon’s neighbour Stephen Elson, scared, starts drinking. 

Gordon tells the police, meaning superintendent Minter aka Super, that someone wrote some threatening letters to Hannah, signed Big Foot, and then some big traces are found, as if made with big big feet. 

Hannah had sent a telegram to Elfa, asking her to come to the beach house, but Elfa arrives very very late because of an accident. 

Elfa rents an apartment to Seargeant Lattimer’s uncle, who is angry because someone keeps leaving eggs and flowers outside his door.

There’s more than one attempt on Super’s life. Super finally catches the homeless man who kept singing at night, and it’s Leigh, Elfa’s father that she thought dead at sea.

He was rather out of his mind, and he was the one leaving eggs and flowers because that was the place where they once lived together, and he didn’t want his little girl to starve…

There are now policemen guarding the clinic where Leigh is, for his own protection. He does receive a poisoned cake, delivered in Elfa’s name by homeless guy Sullivan. Jim finds him entirely by chance, and Super asks Gordon to interview him, so that with his intelligence and knowledge of psychology he might get somewhere… but then Gordon is found in his room, drugged with chloroform, with the bottle thrown out of the window… it really was no surprise to find out that it was Gordon himself, it was easy enough to throw the bottle out of the window. It was his excuse, to not meet Sullivan because the man could have recognized him.

Some time ago Gordon Cardew was full of debts, he had lost his clients’ money, he was ruined,  so he wrote a confession and wanted to commit suicide, but he got distracted by a bad accident at sea. He took his boat to rescue two men: one was Elson, an American running from the police, and the other was Leigh,  who was responsible for two boxes of money. So Elson hit him and threw him outside the boat, to die at sea, and the two men keep the money.

Hannah found his letter of confession, and she kept it, and they shared the money among the three of them. Now Hannah wants to marry him, she wants to be the mistress of the house, she loves him and wants to marry him no matter of his feelings. He does not love her, but she blackmails him with that letter. 

That night, he married her under another name, then they went together to Beach Cottage; he was hidden in the car, just in case someone was looking. He killed her and then he wore her hat and cape to go out and drive away. He himself had chosen that hat, no matter that it did not suit her, because it was big and could hide his face. He was the one to make those big foot tracks, to send the police off-track. He had used huge boots…

Elson is killed by Cardew, who shot him because Elson was getting too scared.

Sergeant Lattimer, who we saw take some money from Elson, was not a dirty cop at all. He was following Super’s orders, to keep around Elson, manipulating him for information, just as Super tried to manipulate Cardew, break him, and yet neither of them confessed. 

With Elson dead, Cardew tries to flee, he’s found out now but he almost manages to flee, but then Super thinks of the Thames, and that someone might use that way to escape, and so he finds Gordon’s boat and arrests him. 

ITA L’orma gigante

Double Dan / Diana of Karakara by Edgar Wallace

 From 1924.

I didn’t llike this one. It was funny, in a way, a true comedy of errors, but I didn’t like this Gordon, and I absolutely didn’t like that he ended up a couple with his very young cousin. 

Diana lives in Australia, prety comfortable with the money that an old aunt left her. She has exchanged a few letters with her English cousin, Gordon Selsbury, but they’ve never met. Suddenly she decides she wants a change, and she’ll go meet him. He has no idea and is quite shocked when she appears at his door. He doesn’t want her there because he’s an unmarried man and it’s just not done, very inappropriate, what with her being alone without a chaperon… he insists, she does too, saying that only the police will be able to get her out of that house, and that would be a scandal because she would resist… and so he wants to go out himself but she says she’ll tell the press that he disappeared… he insists and finally bursts that she must go away, so she starts phoning the press saying that she’s got nowhere else to go and her only chance now is the river… so he really has no choice but to let her stay…

Gordon is a man who feels superior, he talks philosophy with his friend Heloise and he thinks that their relationship is superior. 

She wants to go to Ostenda together, and she succeeds in convincing him. He feels embarrassed though, that he has to tell his brother everything to have ‘an accomplice’. He also feels rather indignant that his brother thinks that he and Heloise are a couple, or something, as if he was too superior to have such a thing as romantic love or sexual interest. 

He tells Diana that he’s going to Scotland, and asks his servant Trent to go to Scotland in his place and send a telegram to Diana from every station.

When they see each other at the stataion, though, Heloise starts her mother scene: she says that her husband is back, that he’s crazy jealous, and so he should go to Ostenda alone and she’ll reach him as soon as possible. His suggestion to expain everything to the man, that their friendship is entirely platonic and intellectual, is received with scorn, and Heloise dismisses the idea saying nobody would believe it.

A private investigator, Superbus, tells Diana and Bobby Selsbury about Dan, a man who can transform into anyone he wants, to rob them. He says that Dan has an accomplice, a woman, and Bobby strongly suspects Heloise and he hurries to the station to warn Gordon, but doesn’t find him. 

Gordon is too scared of this situation and of her husband, so he decides to come back home. He’s too embarrassed to let anyone know though, so he sneaks in and finds Heloise doing the same. She says she followed him and he believes it, has no suspicions at all. 

Diana finds them together so of course she thinks they’re Dan and his accomplice. Of course because Gordon is supposed to be on a train to Scotland, not sneaking around with a woman. She never entertains the possibility that Gordon could have lied to her, she thinks too highly of him…  :-/

Gordon refuses to tell her the truth and so he sort of admits to being Dan.

She does not call the police, instead she has hi work in the house.

Then Dempsi comes back. A young man that proposed to her in Australia, talked a lot about love and then, since she refused, he went and got lost in the wild, or something, and she thought him dead. Now he’s back, is inside the house, and talks of Love and Marriage. She calls Gordon ‘uncle Isaac’ and Heloise ‘aunt Lizzie’ and she wants them to act their part so she won’t be alone with Dempsi. She also calls Superbus to keep an eye on uncle Isaac who is a bit touched in the head. 

Bobby finally comes back, and at first  believes Gordon’s story, but then Gordon refuses to tell Diana the truth and only wants his money to go away, so Bobby thinks he’s Dan too now. 

One night Gordon manages to escape: Superbus is sleeping, and there is a thief in the house. Gordon knows the man and lets him open the safe, gives him a bit of money and keeps the rest for himself. He lets the man escape and then does the same himself.

Dempsi shoots Superbus’  little toe, and when the police arrive they recognize Dan in Dempsi, and arrests him. Heloise runs away.

Then Father Dempsi arrives, and Diana goes to him the money that she owes him, and that she was about to give to the other guy, the fake-Dempsi. 

Gordon arrives, he says he took a plane, and she jumps into his arms and kisses him.

Just like that.

There’s no talking about the truth: now that she knows that the guy was not really Dempsi, she must know that he was Dan, for sure, and therefore that Gordon was really him since he could not be Dan as well. 

He’s also around 50 years of age, while she’s just 18…

I do not approve of this book.

ITA il trasformista

The India-rubber men by Edgar Wallace

This was a bit boring and there was no real investigation and no real mystery. Theo nly nice, good thing was that the woman and the girl saved themselves; yes, they did need the police or the fire-fighters to take them to safety, but they wouldn’t have found them on their own.

This story has John Wade as the river cop: he’s smart enough but doesn’t do much. A normal cop, who has to follow the investigation step by step, without any genius hunch.

At the beginning of the book, we’re told of the India Rubber Men ( or, in Italy, la banda dagli occhi ciechi, the gang of the blind eyes). They’re a group of robbers who wear rubber gloves and gas maks, and it seems like Wade will have to find them. By the river there is also a club called Mecca. Golly Oaks and his wife own it, and it’s usually filled with sailors or river thieves.

Mrs Oaks has a bad attitude, while Golly is quiet and passive. They have a girl living thre, Lila Smith, who calls them aunt and uncle even though they aren’t. Wade often sotops by to see her and talk to her. 

Things start slowly: Wade sees a woman falling in the river, it’s not clear to me if she fell by accident or voluntarily. Anyway, Wade saves this Anna and sees that she’s desperately clutching an old photograph of a child. She seems mad, but Wade recognizes Lila Smith in the child. Then one inght he sees a man taking Lila to dinner, both well dressed.

This was never cleared satisfactorily: why did he take her out every once in a while? Like, one dinner every year?

Raggit Lane is a man who wears too much perfume, buys stolen goods from Mama Oaks and works for the old man. 

Wade is very curious and tries to spy on them but can’t hear anything. He can only follow them. 

After dinner, the man drove her to a house. After a short while Lila came back out with her usual poor clothes and with Mama Oaks. When Wade checks the house, it does not look lived in, bu then he sees three Chinese men entering, and when they go away one of them is killed by the others because he wanted to go to the police. 

Anna sees Captain Aikness ad grabs him calling him by another name, but when the police takes her away, Lord Sinifor sees her. She calls him Tommy and he follows them and pays to get her out of jail.

Wade sees the captain and knows he’s the man who takes Lila out once a year.

Wade consults with Elk on everything.

Wade sees Lila at the club. There’s a new girl calling her Miss. Lila tells Wade that she’ll go to school to learn, and that she’ll be fine, but she adds that she doesn’t like those dinners. The man acts kin to her, but she’s very scared of him. 

Raggit Lane’s role in this book seems just to try and kill Wade, and he tries a lot, but he fails every time until he’s arrested.

Wade is both curious and suspicious about people’s involvement with this Anna and he talks to Lord Siniford. He also talks to Golly, after hearng of a man singing. Wade warns both that should Anna die, they’d be locked up right away, and this is the only reason why Anna reaches the end of the book alive.

Investigating this Lord, it turns out that he gets his money as an old lady’sonly heir. Her only daughter apparently died, the lawyer is sure of it, Wade thinks otherwise. So, the child ‘died’, the lady left the money to him but only a bit at a time, he’ll get the rest after her 21st birthday.

Anna is sure the child is alive, Wade strongly suspects the child to be Lila, and Lord Siniford plans to marry Lila because of it.

Golly and some men try to kill Wade, and he gets out alive only because of a warning by Lila that she heard them talk about ventilation, so he wears a gas mask.

Another time when men are waiting for him at the club, she stops him, and he’s only injured. She hurriedly takes him away on a boat. 

Lila is put with a sergeant’s wife; Wade wants her safe, but at some point she’ll be taken away after drugging the woman, with the assistance of Mama Oaks so that Lila would go willingly. Wade arrests Mrs Oaks because of this, and just when he thinks she’ll talk, she dies, poisoned. 

Lord Siniford is found dead as well, because captain Aikness thinks of marrying her himself.

At this point it appears he might be the big boss, especially after his old boat is found. Inside there were jewels and stull, lots of it. 

He has Lila locked in a cabin, but she’s not scared because Golly is there, and she grew up with him, thinking him a good man. It’s soon clear that Golly thinks of marrying her himself, she’s worth a lot of money and is a young and pretty girl. 

Golly puts Anna in Lila’sroom to keep her quiet, thinking her mental and therefore harmless. Golly is the big boss, he let his wife act al bossy around people to look passive, but she knew him and was scared of him. He ordered to poison her. He has lots of money already and a house in South America or something, but he’s very vain and greedy. He plans two big robberies and to sail away with the girl, but Anna and Lila start a fire and manage to get out on the roof, so that the police can see them and Wade takes them away. 

The robberies go well enough, but before he can sail away, his ship is destroyed, bombarded by the police, I guess, and only Golly comes out alive, only to be hanged later on. 

The end.

It was adventurous, and probably more realistic than many other stories because the investigation moved so slowly without the cop having a ‘hunch’ out of nowhere or stuff like that. 

It was also a bit boring though, because not much happened after all.

 

ITA la taverna sul fiume

The fourth plague by Edgar Wallace

 I found this one a bit boring, honestly. There is a great story, and the biggest threat possible, but it was slow, with characters that didn’t really get to me. It was a good story, in a way, but not for me.

There’s a hero who is a bit like Sherlock Holmes in the way thata he knows stuff that nobody knows, and we’re not told how he can possibly know, just that he’s super smart. He can also always be where he needs to be, of course, knowing everything.

There is a mysterious, secret criminal organization, the Red Hand or something, very dangerous. Italian genius Tillizzini already stopped them in America, and now they are here in England.

They send threats to get money, a ‘pay or we’ll kill you’ kind of thing, but they are also frantically looking for something specific, their boss wants a very, very rare medallion. Almost unique, there’s only two in the world, made by Leonardo Da Vinci himself. one was thought to be lost and the oher is in Sir Ralph’s collection. This gang kills without a second thought.

So, the first one: a man who did have second thoughts on this whole thing, gave it to Frank Gallinford, who he knew is a gentleman. Frank will give it to Tillizzini who will keep it safe. They’ll try to kill him and fail. Count Festin will try to steal it only to fall for a duplicate. 

The second one, though, is harder to protect. Sir Ralph’s young and beautiful wife Vera is totally, passionately in love with Count Festin and will do anything for him, so eventually she steals it for him. 

Tillizzini tries to prevent this, but Festin gets it this time.

Somehow Tillizzini knew about Vera and their plan… :-/

Inside these medallionsthere’s Leonardo’s research on the plague, so now the red hand threatens the whole of England: immunity and lots of money or we’ll spread the fourth plague on this Country… It’s absurd, is what it is, of curse they can’t agree: not only there would be no Law, but there would also be no end to it. People would live knowing that at any moment they might demand something else or finallyd o it, and they’d be dead. It’s impossible, not acceptable, it would made this gang the masters of England, really unacceptable.

Count Festin also kidnaps Marjorie, because he thinks he’s in love with her, but she loves Frank. Tillizzini will free her befre having England’s full forces attack the house he’s in with his gang.

Of course Festin will die and Tillizzini be thanked for saving them all, and right at the end he reveals a fact: Count Festin was raised to be that way by a bad father, a bad man who taught him only how to be bad. Tillizzini is his older brother who hated his father and left. Which explains why they were both smart, 

But also explains the phone call from Tillizzini to Festin before starting to bombard the house. Once you know that, the phone call becomes so important, even if they say nothing of any conseguence or importance. 

Vera joined him for the end: she’s the one to tell him that he’s surrounded, to tell him the reality of the force against him, and she’s there to die with him, and it’s a powerful thing, to see her happy.

Towards the end of the attack, they go up on the roof together, and die together.

ITA La Mano Rossa

Columbo - Strange bedfellows

 A good episode, I liked it. Colombo was fun, and his scenes were good, really good. The murderer was not, but that’s ok. It was a good enough episode, where the bad guy plotted quite well, it was mostly bad luck for him if he didn’t get away with it.

Teddy likes to gamble a bit too much, and more than once he’s lost money, and was saved only by his brother Graham, that must have tired of it since he’s started plotting his murder very meticulously.

Nothing happens by chance from now on, he’s planned every move to kill his brother and blame it on his bookmaker Bruno Romano. And a good plan it was, he might have gotten away with it but, bad luck for him, Romano has an alibi for the night of Teddy’s murder… Romano may be already dead, but the girl won’t stand for his name to be thrown in the mud like that, and insists on her story. She speaks to Colombo, and she also speaks to big boss Vincenzo Fortelli: she calls him to tell him that Romano was with her that night and could not, in any way, have murdered anyone. So Fortelli speaks to Colombo as well, with a clear message: deal with it or I will.

!

Now details:

Graham and Teddy lost their parents and are now the sole owners of their stables where they breed race horses. Teddy owes a lot of money and Graham told him that his horse will win for sure so the debt will be paid. The day of the race, Graham gives his horse a pill, so that he ends up fourth. Teddy is desperate, terrified, and Graham comforts him, tells him he’ll think of everything, he’ll talk to Romano and find a solution. 

We saw already at the beginning of the episode that he bought a gun, a specific gun, quite secretly.

He sends Teddy home to wait. He wears a fake beard and goes to Romano’s restaurant (that he owns, that’s his official, respectable job). He frees a rat in the women’s restroom then he orders a scotch and smokes a sigarette, waiting. As soon as a woman starts screaming and screaming (you’d think she met a psycho killer, not a rat…), of course everybody runs to her. Romano and the barman work together to trap the small animal, and Graham sneaks into Romano’s office to call home and speak to Teddy. This way there is proof of a phone call from ‘Romano’ to Teddy.

Back home, he tells Teddy that he’s got the money (maybe by selling a prized horse? Whatever, it’s all lies) and they have to meet Romano that very night, so they drive to an isolated road and Graham kills him with the gun that he bought. He cleans Teddy’s house of his fingerprints, takes away the butt of the cigarette that he smoked earlier, then goes home on a bike that he had hidden in the car trunk (yeah, it looked so small and fragile compared to his big size, the man was like a mountain, but I guess as long as it works for one night, than he can throw it away no problem…)

Columbo really looks worse for wear, we see immediately that he’s not ok because he doesn’t speak to the cop that as usual tries to send him away, never guessing that he’sa lieutenant: indeed he’s not fine, he ate some fish that must not have been fresh at all, and feels very poorly. He’s sharp as always, though, and immediately notices that there is no cigarette butt but there is indeed cigarette ash, the first small thing that makes him think. he finds receipts of his gambling (that indeed might give credit to Graham’s plot) and also one of the car-cleaners, from the day before, so the ash must be new for sure.

He goes to tell Graham, and the man starts throwing immediate suspicions on Romano. Columbo asks him a cigarette - first time ever that we see him with a cigarette!!! - but it’s all for the case, to check that it’s the same ash from the car. 

Graham call Romano to set an appointtment, to settle the debt he says, and when Romano shows up at his house, Graham kills him and switches his gun with the one Graham used to kill Teddy. He immediately calls the police, and says that Romano threatened to kill him, that he came to talk about the money Teddy owed him and Graham had to defend himself, and so he shot him.

When Colombo asks, Graham swears he’s not been in Teddy’s car, and cheerfully tries to come up with a solution for the ash. He has no fear whatsoever, he’s sure his plan is foolproof,  perfect.

Right enough, everybody believes him, because it is believable, they know Romano. Colombo ‘mostly’ believes him, but there’s still a few small things that trouble him, so he keeps asking questions around, to tie all the knots, as it’s his usual. He goes to Romano’s restaurant, and there’s a girl there that swears that Romano was with her the whole night, and never left, so he could not have killed that Teddy. Colombo talks about the gun and the phone calls, but she doesn’t care, she insists that he was with her… and then Colombo hears the bartender, he’s quite angry about that rat story, because the woman that screamed now wants to sue them. This means that Colombo learns that the night of the phone call, exactly at that hour, there was such a commotion because of a small rat and Romano left his office for a few minutes… he also learns of a man that they didn’t know sitting at the bar, with quite a precious gold lighter. Of course Colombo will ask him to light his cigar, so he sees the lighter. 

Colombo is ‘kidnapped’ by a couople of thugs working for Vincenzo Fortelli. This guy speaks Italian (rather badly, my goodness) but Colombo says he doesn’t understand because he never got the hang of it - well, we know that’s not true, I guess he just wants to put some distance. This Fortelli is not exactly a good guy, according to Colombo is known for prostitution and gambling business, although the man says it’s in the past… Colombo wants to leave, until Fortelli mentions Romano, then he agrees to talk. Fortelli says that he believes the girl, she called him to tell her story, and Fortelli now tells Colombo to do something or he will. He tells Colombo that Romano’s gun was recorded at the police, there is a ballistic record, so Colombo can have proof, can know if that was his gun or not. 

To neatly close the case, Colombo enlists Fortelli’s help. Fortelli goes with two men to threaten Graham, telling him that he must pay back Teddy’s debt, and that now he wants his whole business. You don’t know for sure before, but as soon as Graham tells Colombo and sergeant Brindle about this, it is obvious that they’re in on it, because of their reaction. It was already suspicious to the audience that Fortelli’s two thugs were not the same as before, but now it’s clear why, there’s no more doubts!

Basically, these two guys are cops, they pretend to work for Fortelli, they do their best to scare the hell out of Graham, and it works. The last straw is when Graham is at a man’s office for work, and the secretary tells him that Colombo left a message, to meet him that night at the Bay Leaf restaurant, so he goes, sits down, orders his scotch and waits. Colombo never shows up, and then Graham starts noticing things, like that both the bartender and the girl from Romano’s restaurant are here. When he tries to leave, there’s the two men outside the door. Graham calls Colombo who says he knew nothing about this appointment, but will come right away. When he arrives, their little play starts: Colombo says they want to leave, the two thugs/cops stop them ‘roughly’, and they’re brought face to face with Fortelli. 

Fortelli speaks clearly and says that Colombo now has only two choices, and Colombo chooses to go home alive, he says he’s not paid enough to play hero, and that even though Graham killed two people there is nothing that he can do to prove it… he’s almost out when Graham yells that he will confess, to both murders. Colombo wants more than that, and so Graham tells him where he hid the second gun. Colombo phones Brindle immediately and they find it in just a few minutes. 

Not only this, but Fortelli (who carries quite a punch, my word: actually he slaps Graham, doesn’t punch him, and so hard that Graham stumbles backwards…. Really, that mountain of a man, and old Fortelli almost knocks him down with a slap!)  clearly implies, and Colombo puts it even more clearly for Graham to understand, that if he hires some fancy lawyer to save him with a technicality, “he wouldn’t be saving you”,  it would not be safe for him at all. Because even if it was an agreed plan to get Graham, the truht is that Fortelli would do it for real, so it’s not really just a play, it was not a ‘trick’, more like a warning.

At the end Fortelli invites Colombo in for a drink, but he refuses because, well, they’re not exactly the same kind of people, and not exactly on the same side even. 

Vincenzo Fortelli - Rod Steiger

Sergeant Brindle - Bruce Kirby

ITA duplice omicidio per il tenente Colombo

Columbo - It’s all in the game

 This was such a sad story. A really good episode, in which Colombo has to let a beautiful woman kiss him to keep investigating her… but seriously, it was a good episode, but really sad, I wanted Colombo to let her go, but he can’t, can he? That’s his job, he arrests the murderers; after all, she could have gone to the police, but instead she chose to kill him.

I’ll spoil the whole thing right away, because… well, that’s the point of me writing this blog, after all, to remind myself that I watched it. And also what I thought of it, so when I’ll forget I’ll be able to find it here :lol:

So, we see that Lauren and Nick are engaged ,but she’s also planning of killing him with another woman, a much younger woman. He lies to Lauren about why he has to leave, but the two women keep constantly in touch. After he leaves Lauren’s house, Nick meets Lisa and takes her out, then he takes her back to his apartment, where Lauren is waiting for them. She shoots Nick after taking out the light. It’s midnight. They cover his body with an electric blanket and do a few other things so make it look like it was a robbery and that his car wasn’t there until their chosen time.

At 2am Lauren asks Nick’s building manager Mr Ruddick to let her in because she forgot her keys again,so he opens the door for her and prepares to open Nick’s door as well, since he knows about the two of them. Just when they are in the corridor, Lisa shoots her gun and runs away, to give Lauren a good alibi. Indeed the body is still warm and everybody thinks he died at 2am.

Nobody knows about Lisa, nobody saw her with Nick, they were very careful, and when they need to meet once, to reassure each other, they meet in a public restroom, with nobody around. Lauren is most worried about this, but Lisa is sure that nobody knows about her and Nick - and yet Nick took her out that same night, how can they say that nobody will come forward saying he saw Nick with another woman? Not that it would matter much, probably, since they wouldn’t know who she is. Just one thing they overlooked: Nick’s telephone line. He called Lisa many times from his house - what is not clear to me is why it appears that he only called Lisa from there, and never Lauren, and yet Lauren knew the apartment well, so well that the manager opened for her, I mean, after she gave him her name he instantly opened the door for her, he must have known about them right? Well, I think that was the meaning of him having changed his number or something, when Lisa arrived so he could call her without Lauren knew about it or something… whatever.

It’s not difficult for Colombo to learn of her existence, because of the phone calls. He doesn’t yet know who she is, but he enters her apartment after she’s gone out and looks through her stuff, taking one of her pictures.

Colombo got called so early in the morning for this morning, it was still night basically, that he forgot to put on his shirt and tie, and went to work in his paajmas. Well, he changed his trousers at least :lol but this means that he had to button up his raincoat before he could approach the lady :D

He offered her some of the coffee that a cop made for him (didn’t offer her his hard-boiled egg, of course, not sure if he got to eat that or not). Lauren simply warms her hands with the coffee, without drinking it, because she’s always cold, circulation troubles. 

Colombo has nothing against her, nothing at all, only suspicions because: 1-of the fridge: the ice had all melted because someone had took out the lights, 2-the heat is on, which is odd because it was a very warm day when Nick went out, and there’s supposedly been nobody else in the apartment until the robbery-gone-wrong. And Colombo saw her warming her hands with the coffee, and she’ll admit to him the circulation problem. 3-I make this one a point although they don’t talk much about it, yet I still think it’s important. Not anywhere near proof, but nothing else is anyway. The 3rd point is the aspirin. She was hosting a big party at her house that night, and she told everyone she had a terrible headache, she went and killed Nick, and then came back among her guests saying that she took an aspiring and had some rest, and feels much better. And yet, when Colombo says he has a headache or something, she replies more than once that she doesn’t know if they have anything for it, or if there’s any aspirin in the house. Well, she should know, if she took one just the night before.

There’s a lot of pseudo-flirting between Lauren and Colombo. He needs to be near her to keep investigating her, and really has no valid reason to keep around her, while he sstarts flirting anytime he insists on talking about the murder. At first she doesn’t think him dangerous at all, but after a couple of time meeting him, she is a bit worried about what he might find. Still, she trusts that he can never find anything concrete, because he really can’t, and he knows it.

Lauren rather likes Colombo after all, because she says that he’s kind, and a good man, and makes her feel well. On the other hand, Colombo keeps up the flirting only because of his work. He does say to a friend that he thinks she’s a good person, or something, but he still keeps at it. He lets her buy him a new tie, and changes every time he has to meet her, wearing it for her. He gives her a magnificent bouquet or roses, just beautiful, nnot too much or too little, just perfect. He lets her kiss him, then he cleans his lips from all the lipstick before going back home… 

Then he has no other choice: he knows that he’ll never find proof, no matter how long he spends on it. His only chance to close this case is to have a confession. It’s obvious to anyone what is the only thing that would force her to confess: Lisa. We all saw that there was real affection there, they were worried about each other. And because of the picture he took, Colombo is sure that they know each other, because they were both near a unique chair, very distinctive. So he has the policee arrest Lisa, and treat her harshly. He calls Lauren to watch, and he doesn’t have to do anything else, really. At this point, she just makes sure of a few points: that he needs a confession, and that he would not make her suffer if she gave him that confession. So he agrees, he goes and lets Lisa go, telling her to go back to Europe and stay there. She thanks him and goes.

Lauren wrote her confession, and now she answers all his questions: the lights and the heat, and the shooting it was her. The car and fake robbery: it was her accomplice, a man that she will not name, of course. 

But then Colombo asks her about the girl, and everything comes out. Lisa is her daughter. In Italy she met Nick and they started a relationship. After he heard that she had a rich mother, he came here and seduced her to get at her money. But Lauren wrote about him to Lisa, and they understood that it was the same man. Lisa came here and confronted him, gaining his anger. He gave her a nasty looking scar where neck meets shoulder - we saw that, and therefore we all knew that his words of love meant nothing. 

Lauren says that Nick hurt Lisa and threatened her life if she interfered again, but Lisa went to her anyway. So Lauren took him out of the picture, and killed him. 

Nick was a sh*t excuse of a man, and I was not sorry about his fate, I was more touched by Lauren’s story, and also by the fact that keeping Lisa out of it, she was giving up her best and only defence. Without the other woman, the daughter with a scar on her neck, what else could be her motive? Nothing that might move a jury. 

Good episode,but sad.

Lauren was Faye Dunaway

Lisa was Claudia Christian

P.s. I love that, other than the tie, when Lauren sent him a gift it was for his dog ;) I also love that she was smarter than his usual murderers,she never tried to come up with answers to his questions, she never offerred to solve it for him, she never tried to blame it all on someone else… of course she faked a robbery, but that meant unknown people that would nevere be found, not some specific innocent person.

ITA donne pericolose per il tenente Colombo

Columbo - Butterfly in shades of grey

 Another episode with William Shatner, and this time his character is quit despicable and totally unlikable. He plays it well, mind you, and it is another good episode, but not one of my favourites because this Fielding Chase is not simply arrogant, but immoral, deceitful, a man who won’t stop at anything to get what he wants, who lies to everybody, I did not like him at all. 

The motive for the murder is also quite grey, because this Chase is totally jealous and possessive of Victoria, a 25-year-oold girl that he calls his daughter but he adopted her when she was ten. He loved her mother first, but never married her, he lost her to someone else and always regretted it, and promised to raise the child as his own. Now, he’s raised a child for 15 years, it is indeed normal and right that he calls her his daughter, but what is not so normal and not so right is that he can’t bear to leave her live her life as she wants. He wants her always by his side, doing what he wants, forever living in his house…

Gerry Winters is a investigative journalist, working for Chase and his radio show. Gerry does not like Chase, who takes his work never acknowledging his name. Gerry is a friend of Victoria, though, and wants to see her free of her domineering father.

When Gerry makes a clear insinuation that Chase’s interest in Victoria does not resemble that of a father, Chase slaps him in the face, right in front of a lot of people, even threatening his life. They never liked each other, but now things are at a point of no return because Gerry wants to take Victoria away from him, wants her to find her own way. Victoria wrote a book, a novel, and Gerry had his friend Lou read it, who liked it very much. When Victoria tells her father about this, he calls the publisher Lou works for telling him to refuse her book. Gerry is so angry, and convinces Victoria to go to New York with him.

At this point, his fate is clear, Chase will kill him to stop him from taking Victoria away. The method is quite ingenious, in a simple way. He fakes regret and calls Gerry asking for a meeting. Chase tells him to call the next day to fix a meeting, at precisely 4pm. The next day, then, Chase drives to his house and enters from the back with a key that he took from his daughter. When Gerry makes the call, Chase waits until the answering machine starts, which is after he hears Gerry start talking and telling him to answer. Chase then pick up the phone in the other room, Gerry’s other phone, and talks to him (which is one of those movie things, really… like how people can always open and close doors without anyone hearing anything, now he speaks with a normal tone of voice, not whispering at all because he’s supposed to be at home, and Gerry doesn’t hear him just a few meters behind him, he only hears him on the phone…)

The exchange only a couple of phrases and then Chase shoots him three times, he wanted to be sure I guess, and then he pretends to hear the shots on the phone and be very alarmed… all this because he will have recorded proof of what happened, his alibi that he was elsewhere when the murder happened. Then he cleans the phone, leaves the handkerchief on his way out and drives away, and four minutes after the shooting he calls the police. Since he can’t call from his house, obviously, he calls from his car, and he tells Colombo that he rushed out in his alarmed state and then he thought of the police and called from the car.

Now, I must say that to make it clear that Gerry was not after Victoria in any way, that he was only a friend to her, they made the character gay, and also still in mourning after his partner died. So even if he started seeing someone, he was nothing serious (why then they said that this actor Ted had the keys to his house? You give your keys to someone you’ve been seeing for nine days, really? I think it’s pretty absurd…)

Colombo investigates, of course, very surprised that not only there is a witness, but also a recording of the murder. He learns from Victoria that she should have been at home, but her father insisted that she checked something at work, and also that she thought she had lost the key to Gerry’s house, but it was there the next day so she thought she just imagined it, being in shock as she was.

Colombo also learns that Chase has cable tv at home, because otherwise he can’t see anything because of the mountains, or something. Anyway, this will lead him to check for phone reception. He gets a cell phone (just for a trial run, he says, he didn’t buy it) and he tried every direction, but there’s no way he could have made the call at that moment, because there is no way he could get a signal. That’s how and when he arrests him.

At least Victoria is not there to witness his arrest, she had just left him to go to New York with Lou, who resigned from his post and is still very interested in her book and in working with her. At first she didn’t want to go, but after Chase played a dirty trick during his live conversation with a senator, she can’t stay any longer. Good girl, she believed him long enough, now there was no saving it. They had that conversation already, she told him she didn’t accept to divulge false stories or ruin an innocent’s name, and he still did it.