Columbo - Columbo likes the nightlife

 Not bad as a last episode, intriguing. 

The story is:

Justin wants to open a nightclub and everything’s almost ready, he only needs money but Tony assures him that he’ll haev the money in 36 hours.

Tony goes to see his ex-wife Vanessa, wannabe-actress, but she has a new man: Justin. Tony sees a picture of them and gets jealous and aggressive, she pushes him away, he falls down and… dies. Just like that, not really sure of what.

She freaks out because she knows that Tony is the son of a New York Mafia boss, so she calls Justin. 

Justin really wants that money, so he tells her to say nothing to anybody. Two days later he has the money on his account, so he goes to Tony’s hotel to make it look like he just left the room. It’d be all over, more or less, but someone saw it all, a tabloid journalist who was following Tony. He has pictures and blackmails them, but Justin doesn’t want to pay, so he kills him instead while Vanessa waits in the car.

This is the murder that brings Colombo to us. It was made to look like a suicide, but Colombo smells mouthwash on the man and checks his foot to confirm he had just cut hisnails, not things one does before haging oneself. 

Colombo finds Justin because of some fluo stuff on his car’s tire, then he finds Vanessa because a man left the deceased a message because the journalist promised him money to stay a few hours in his garden, which look directly at Vanesssa’s very stylish home, glass all around and therefore totally on display.

It’s Tony’s family that declares him missing and Colombo doesn’t know how it all went but he knows that Justin is his man, and Colombo isvery observant: there are three fish tanks in the ground, but one of them has fewer fish because it has less water, and that’s because Tony is buried there. Colombo finds this and can now arrest them both.

P.s. How annoying it was that Justin kept telling Vanessa to calm down, every time, barely listening to her :-/

Columbo - A trace of murder

I liked it, it was nice, very easy and predictable, sure, to guess from start to finish, but also enjoyable to watch.

This time the murderer was one of those arrogant ‘I’m so intelligent’ type that think he did it all perfectly and thought of everything and, of course, that Colombo is stupid simply because he’s spontaneous, simple in the best way, not fake like most other people who watch how they act in front of others. This is also why he doesn’t wear fancy stuff, because he likes to be comfortable and at ease, and feels no need to impress people with fashion trends or silly things like that.

This episode starts showing us Clifford Calvert exchanging words with Howard Seltzer because Howard is sueing him. Clifford punches him in front of many people. Later that night we see Clifford telling his wife Cathleen that if he loses or if the tax people get their hands on him, he may lose everything and she’d be poor again. This is when it’s clear that she’ll kill one of these two men. Later we see her with her secreet lover Paatrick Kinsley. She brings out the topic of having Clifford disappear so they could spend all his money, but she’d be the first suspect of course, so she has an alternative: kill Howard and blame it on Clifford. Patrick agrees and they act their plan. They take Clifford’s gun and one of his cuban cigars. Cathleen waits for Clifford at one of her friend’s wedding. Patrick goes to Howard’s house - who believes his story that he needs to phone because his daughter had an accident, or something. Howard lets him in and answers all his questions: never been married or had children, no maids around the house… so once he’s sure nobody will appear, Patrick shoots him, then plants his ‘evidence’: he uses his own Swiss army kniffe to cut the bottom of the cigar and leave it in the ashtray than he uses a cordless avcuum cleaner to collect some of the cat’s fur and carpet fibers that he’ll leave for Cathleen to take and spread over Clifford’s jacket while dancing at the party. 

Patrick throws away the gun because he says it’d look too obvious and no cop would fall for it. He works in the police now, in the scientific department, and meets Colombo right away.

Patrick doesn’t find the piece of cigar and this worries him so much he goes back to search for it. Colombo orders a cop to look everwhere for Howard’s cat and he finally finds it, the same day Patrick was there. The cat brings them to the cigar, because of course it was the cat who moved it, there was nobody else. Now Patrick tells Colombo he’s come for this because he had seen it the night of the murder but was not among the evidence, and nobody will ever remark on this but it’s obvious he could not, because the cat moved it then escaped when the cop opened the door and found the body, and is found only now. No way he could have seen it that night.

Patrick joins “too much” the investigation, asking about suspects and stuff, he really does appeara to want Clifford arrested, and yet maybe at this point Colombo wonders if it’s just because he started this job only recently - I think he was a professor collaborating with the police before, now he’s part of it.

Colombo finds details, as he usually do: Clifford uses a special cutter for his cigars, making a totally different cut - and his wife never saw this? Wow, she never paid him any attention, did she?

Also, Clifford stopped at a supermarket for cough pills like ten minutes after the murder, which was in the opposite direction of when he was going - I mean, the wedding is in the opposite direction if you consider it from the victim’s house. 

That of course makes no sense, so Colombo starts suspecting the wife who, of course, had easy access to the gun and a good motive indeed. Patrick is still sure Clifford will be arrested when he presents the test results of the cat hair on his jacket, but Colombo doesn’t give up and makes various enlargements of two wedding pictures, one of Clifford’s back right after the ceremony and one while he was dancing with Cathleen. One shows a clean jacket, the other doesn’t.

This would free Clifford but not necessarily accuse the real guilty ones, but Colombo saw what I saw when he put them together at his favourite place. At a table with their coffees, Patrick took the sugar cubes  and pushed the sweetener towards her because he knew how she likes her coffee! Colombo noticed this and it was a shock, but now things started making a lot more sense. Colomb watches them to be sure, and indeed when she gets in teh car, Patrick opens the front door of the car showing that he knew she prefers the front seat. Neither Patrick or Cathleen noticed it, but Colombo did.

So, at the end Colombo shows them both, separately the pictures and he also takes Patrick’s swiss army knife to check for cigar traces. He makes them believe that the other wants to betray him/her, so they talk to the DA and start accusing each other. 

The end…

But Colombo must explain it to the audience, even though it was pretty clear, and it’s a long scene when they also use a wrong scene (the hand moves the milk but Patrick didn’t, he moved the sugar). I think it was unnecessary, at least they could have made it shorter, no need for the reenactment. 

The funny ending: Colombo cuts the cuban cigar Clifford gave him - he sort of made Clifford give him one - with the cutter Clifford gave him, but he does not like it and bites the tip off like he always did, and likes it much more :-)

Cathleen was played by Shera Danese, Peter Falk’s wife

ITA sulle tracce dell’assassino

Columbo - Colombo and the murder of a rock star

Not my favourite one for sure, this ending was worse than the chewing-gum one, it made absolutely no sense. 

Let’s proceed with order and the whole plot: Marcy Edwards lives with Hugh Creighton. She’s an ex rock star, he’s a famous lawyer who always wins. He has her followed: she sees her lover at their beach house for two hours  three days a week. They play at the beach, drink champagne, eat caviar, and have sex.

… every single time… always the same again and again… and not once did they fancy a pizza or whatever else, always champagne and caviar… :-/

So, Hugh ends it: she finds herself locked out of the house with her bags waiting for her, but she won’t go quietly, she wants lots of money even if they’re not married, or she’ll tell everyone that he’s corrupt - I’m not sure if it’s true, it probably is of course but it’s not really important because if people believe her his reputation could be ruined anyway. 

At this point he plans o kill her. He fakes reconciliation, gives her a pill so she won’t drink, puts something in the champagne so he’ll fall aslee and then he shows up dressed as the gardener and strangles her while she’s wide awake. Then he pushes the police to arrest that guy, who woke up next to a dead girl and fled because he has a record. 

Colombo keeps digging: Hugh took away the punctured cork and left one he brought with him, and looking at the two corks Colombo can see one is not right, because all Marcy’s bottles have one star, but one of the corks has two stars … and already this is weird, that she only bought the cheaper kind…

Hugh of course has plenty of two stars bottles.

Colombo openly accuses him but then it turns out he has an alibi, he got a speeding ticket elsewhere, so there’s a picture of him. It’s clearly his face but Colombo can see that the shadows are not right because it was someone else with a flat mask of his face, his assistant who then figures it out… but of course she did: he really told her to take his car, drive to Pasadena and wear a mask while speeding, so to get a ticket? A complete mask while driving is dangerous and yett she did it without knowing why, but did he really think she would not figure it out??? She worked with him! She’d have to be completely dumb to not realize it. Shewill agree to reveal nothing, demanding to be made a partner, but it was a huge risk. Someone could see her driving that car and suddenly wearing a mask… which I insist was insanely dangerous because she couldn’t see, you can’t tell me that there were holes for her eyes or Colombo would have seen right away that it was a mask!

And anyway, I can’t imagine that conversation: ‘you must drive my car to Pasadena and wear a mask with my face when the time is right so to get a speed ticket with my face on the picture’ - ‘of course Hugh, nothing else?’ … just an ordinary day task right?  :-/

Anyway, the first few minutes right until she threatens him, she really appeared to be a b… not a nice lady,  but then we see his plan, we understand he made sure she was sober and awake to know it was him and to feel him strangling her - well, breaking her neck is what killed her, and yet she had a peaceful, pretty face lying there afterwards… - and we see his over-the-top reactions to the ‘news’… and he’s really one of the worst. It doesn’t surprise me that his job was to make sure murderers got away free, he’s just that kind of soul less person. 

Also, the gloves marks on her neck match the marks on the gardener’s truck he used to get there… Colombo’s csi people were amazing…

Columbo - Grand deceptions

 This is the one with the toy soldiers annd the war books.

Famous general Padget’s name is enough for many people to donate millions to his “First foundation for American thought”, which consists in training camps for civilians and something else that is not really really clear, because I don’t think they do actual military operations, so… I don’t know…

Anyway, Colonel Frank Brailie is stealing from it, and also using its money for illegal operations like weapons smuggling and stuff. Padget asked Sgt Keegan to investigate the “special projects fund”, who knows why or how he got to know about it. Keegan found out everything about Brailie’s fund and also about his affair with Padget’s younger wife.

Brailie worked hard on a huge diorama representing Gettysburg, saying he received the books in the morning - a box labeled books arrived - and the toy soldiers only that night, so that while Keegan was murdered he was apparently very very busy putting every soldier at their right place. Colombo will prove that he did not, that he’s got no alibi, because there’s no possible was all those books fit in the box labeled books, because it’s too small… and this is ok, I get it, but I still have two problems: 1, the obvious, is why did they send him the soldiers in a box labeled books and the books in a box labeled soldiers? Aren’t they two separate shops? How did he manage that? And even if it was the same shop on war stuff, did they make a delivery like this under his explicit request? Colombo didn’t check? How long was it since he planned the murder?

Furthermore, we see him open a soldiers box: it contained five of them… judging by that, I do NOT think it even remotely possible that all those soldiers could fit in that small box… if you throw them in without their little fancy boxes, yes, otherwise: no!

I don’t like this episode because Brailie is boring and arrogant and this foundation looks to me like a waste of money. Even the comic scene at the funeral was too silly, Colombo and an officer changing seats over and over to talk privately… thus managing to be very, evry noticeable… Bah.

P.S. I want a Colombo-toy soldier like we see at the end! 

Columbo - Identity crisis

Not my favourite episode, but the scene with the belly dancer was important. 

Leslie Nielsen plays only the first few minutes then his character dies. The murderer is played by Patrick McGoohan, who was also in “By dawn’ early light”, the one obsessed with finding the apple cider. 

What I don’t like is that I don’t really understand why there was a murder at all. They seemed to be talking amiably before, and his death accomplished nothing… I mean, Geronimo (Nielsen) did say they did a job together before, they’re spies, but Brenner kept his share of money, and also that he knows Brenner is a double agent, but then Brenner killed him without knowing what proof he has? Or if this proof might turn up anyway after his death? And also, Geronimo knew he was a double agent who conned him once already and still accepted this job? When his only contact was Brenner himself? That seems very silly to me…

Plot, so to understand:

Brenner is a CIA operator, and meets with Geronimo Herderson. Geronimo is also a spy but he’s not Cia, and Geronimo is not his real name of course, he uses it now in LA. They arrange to meet at a Luna Park, they walk and talk. Brenner tells himthere’s a man, Steinmetz, who has something they want… I don’t remember what… so he gives Geronimo the job to meet with Steinmetz’ man and make a deal. Geronimo goes and meeets a black man, M something, I don’t remember the name (I know I know, but if I don’t write it down immediately, my ADHD does this a lot), and it all goes well between them, the deal is ok enough, M goes away but before Geronimo can go as well Brenner appears and hits him…twice and he’s dead… before the 90s nobody died hard, they got hit on the head or stabbed once in the back with a kitchen knife and they were dead in one second, not even the time to say Ah!

Colombo is different in this episode, from the start. He’s never rude but he’s not his usual nice self. He tells the police people working on the body to move away. Also it’s night but he’s not sleepy like the times he was called in the early mornings, he does not ask for coffee. 

Geronimo was at the bar/night club at 11pm, Colombo saw his body around 1am. There’s a belly dancer at the club who is still dancing when Colombo arrives. Colombo keeps watching her, from the moment he got in, he says she’s interesting, than he asks his sergeant if he noticed her eyes, and then he exclaims: “She’s shy!”, an interesting scene indeed that was totally ruined in the Italian version: “ma hai visto che occhi, che occhi! And “Peccato che sia timido!”. The American scene explained that he noticed something strange about her which made her interesting, and that unlike every other man around he did look at her eyes until he figured her out, that despite dancing (for hours, poor girl lol) in a club she’s actually a shy girl. The second one means that he likes her, finds her eyes beautiful and if he wasn’t shy he’d approach her, which is awful and nonsense. 

The sergeant finds out the victim is Henderson, recently in town, but his company says that man is not Henderson! Since Geronimo asked for directions they know he was at an amusement park; Colombo sees the photographer and looks at her unsold pictures. Of course Brenner went and bought the pictures of him, but Colombo watches all the unsold ones and finds the victim behind a “fat lady”, both him and the girl call her that, I guess they were not overly concerned with politically correct back then, or with being careful not to hurt anyone’s feelings… He probably doesn’t mean anything by it, he said once he likes women with curves, but the girl does for sure.

You can clearly see him in the picture, and yet the girl didn’t because she looked superficially, just at the picture’s main subject and not behind them… :-/  And she’s young, does she really need a magnifying glass to see him? This scene shows, as Colombo calls it, his perseverance, but also how superficial everyone else is.

Someone can identify Brenner so Columbo goes to him and of course never leaves him. The Cia puts Colombo under observation, the boss doesn’t like local police ot know about their operations. Colombo admits he suspects him and not that M guy, so Brenner gives him another suspect. Steinmetz almost kills M with a bomb, so M gives the police an identikit of this ‘old man’. We’re not told yet but with the voice and what we can see it’s easy enough to know Steinmetz is actually Brenner.

And may I say it: what identikit they make, it’s basically a portrait, what talent they have, how many people are really able to describe a man’s face that well??? For real?? 

 

The Cia approach Colombo so he meets the boss and is finally told about Brenner being an operator. The bugs in Colombo’s house are removed :-p Colombo sees the games in Brenner’s house: poker, backgammon, mahjong… “do you like to gamble sir?” - “what else is there?”, an answer that defines this character, combined with his “I find it dull” talking about his own life.

Colombo has a warrant and checks out his alibi: he notices that in a picture of a younger Brernner the man had a receding hairline because now he uses a hairpiece so he thoughtof having a new sketch made, and Brenner looks just like Steinmetz, also the speech he said he recorded at the time of the crime was done in the morning because he closed the blinds because of the sun butt most importantly he talked about China staying out of the Olympics and it was not yet official until the morning, China pulled out of the Olympics at 6am. Busted!

But how did Colombo get a warrant without a motive? And he never talks about motive, he doesn’t know it.

Also, the victim had no coat on, Brenner had to take it off to take away the gun so not to know right away he was an agent or something.