Commentaires de AlsExGal

And this is not a part of the story at all, but it's a scene that sticks with you. Why is Doc sitting in his office, seemingly writing down the names of the bones in the hand of the skeleton, like he's in medical school? But I digress.

Will Bailey (DeForrest Kelley - Yes, THAT DeForrest Kelley) is a survivor of a massacre of troops perpetrated by the Comanches. He comes to town looking for the Indian scout that was used, because he assumes the scout was in on the massacre. He intends to kill him. The scout, Amos Cartwright, enters the Long Branch intent on killing Bailey for what he is accusing him of. Strangely enough, Matt stands up and turns his gun on Bailey when Amos is standing behind Matt with his shotgun aimed at Bailey.

In spite of all of the drawn guns and bubbling testosterone, both men stand down and live to fight another day. Specifically, Bailey is killed by being scalped and Amos has disappeared into Comanche country. Complications ensue.

Amos' problem is that of the Bible verse - "A double minded man is unstable in all his ways". He has tried to live as a Comanche - he had a Comanche wife who died - and as a "white man". He has fundamentally failed at both. The outcome is not sentimentalized in the least

Gunsmoke often used the prejudice of settlers against Indians to tangentially touch on racial prejudice that was becoming an issue at that time in the US that you just couldn't come out and talk about on television. This is one of those episodes.

... this is probably the thinnest excuse for a movie plot you'll ever see on Turner Classic Movies' Noir Alley.

A drummer, Stanley Maxton (Mickey Rooney) gets out of the hospital after returning from war. His fellow patients gift him a drum set and he sets out for LA to get a job in a band. On the way there he's sideswiped by mobster Sonny Johnson (James Craig). Johnson buys Stan a new drum set and sets him up with a job in his gambling operation making 200 dollars a week, and soon Stan has forgot about why he came to LA in the first place.

A raid on the gambling operation has Stan escaping into dancer/cigarette girl Jane Tafford's (Sally Forrest's) car, ala Singin in the Rain. He visits Fluff's, the night club she works in, and jams with the band after hours. Fluff (William Demarest) is impressed and asks Jane to agree to go out with Stan and use the fact that he is falling for her to get him to work for him as a drummer. Complications ensue, including murder.

About 40% of this film consists of musical numbers, and not just any musical numbers. Louis Armstrong and his orchestra have several numbers as well as Vic Damone. It's all well done considering that this is a studio that , at the time, was not known for this kind of film or this kind of music. And, by the way, that's not Mickey Rooney on drums - although he could play - that you hear on the soundtrack. Instead it is Cozy Cole, a drummer actually associated with Louis Armstrong.

Just a few asides - First, William Demarest is a confounding figure as "Fluff". He encourages Jane to date Stan knowing full well he means nothing to her, then turns around and tells Stan that Jane is a career conscious girl who is not interested in taking part in the current Baby Boom generation. Later he dishes out some of the worst advice in the history of the world when he tells Stan to go toe to toe with his old gangster boss over Jane. As a result, his toes are about the only part of Stan not roughed up by Sonny Johnson's muscle men.

Finally, I'll just repeat a comment made by Eddie Muller - Mickey Rooney was in serious relationship with Lana Turner and actually married Ava Gardner. It's not really believable that Sally Forrest would give him the brush off.

If you like your crime dramas full of atmosphere and appreciate good jazz, this film is probably for you.

... and for Chaplin that's saying something!

Chaplin's Little Tramp character encounters two people who end up impacting his life greatly. One is a beautiful blind flower girl. Due to nothing The Tramp does deliberately, she thinks he is a rich man. The other person he encounters is a wealthy man who, one night, is determined to kill himself because his wife has left him. The Tramp stops him, befriends him, and gets him back home. The entire time the rich man is drinking heavily. But when the rich man sobers up he doesn't remember what happened when he was drunk and therefore has no memory of The Tramp or their friendship. That's not so unusual as a plot device. What makes it odd is that the wealthy man is more of a Jekyll and Hyde drunk than a blackout drunk. When he's drunk he remembers everything he's done in past drunken episodes, including who The Tramp is. When sober he remembers none of this. From both of these relationships, complications ensue.

There's a boxing scene mid film that's one of the funniest scenes of any film, ever. It's perfect physical comedy, wonderfully choreographed and I laugh out loud every time I see it. To me, it's the funniest Chaplin scene in any of his films. That scene alone raises it high for me, and then Chaplin's adventures with the millionaire and the sweet romantic scenes with the flower girl seal the deal for me.

For me, it's grander in scope than The Kid, but tighter than the other works in combining both comedy and drama.

I really love this film. It belongs in the Criterion collection for being ahead of its time considering the subject matter, plus it's a good example of international cinema. I caught it on Turner Classic Movies the other night, and it really held my interest.

Made in France and set in France, it's the story of Ludovic Fabre (Georges Du Fresne) and the larger Fabre family - a husband and wife and their four children. The husband, Pierre, has just found a new job and so the family moves into the same neighborhood as his new boss, Albert. This is never a good idea, as it's best to keep work life separate from everything else, but I digress.

The complicating factor is that the Fabres' youngest son, Ludovic, is convinced he is really a girl. He feels like a girl, likes the same things as most girls and the most outward sign of this is that he likes to have his hair longer and dress up in girls' clothes.

Maybe the Fabres could have kept a lid on things if not for the fact that Ludovic develops a crush on his dad's boss's son, Jerome. It's nothing sexual - the kids are only seven. It's the same kind of crush you probably had at that age. Ludovic has them perform a mock wedding ceremony before a teddy bear priest, he tells his parents he will marry Jerome some day, and then he pulls a very public stunt at school so that he can get close to Jerome that distresses not only the other parents but the school administration. Complications ensue.

I really liked this film for several reasons. First, there is the acting talent of Georges Du Fresne, who plays Ludovic amazingly. There is a genuine naivete and innocence in his performance, of a child trying to figure out their gender. Georges was able to communicate so many things without saying anything. I have no idea how such a young child was able to understand the complexities required for such a role.

Second, because it was made almost 30 years ago and not in the US, it lacks the politicization that you would find in a film made in America on the same subject today, that would likely be made with all kinds of shrill sermonizing that just does not sound natural or the way people speak in private or to one another.

Finally, I like it because it shows modern French middle-class life. You see average people having neighborhood parties, leaving for work each day, neighborhood carpooling for getting the kids to school each morning, and worried about layoffs and paying the mortgage if a layoff happens. So many French films involve some kind of extraordinary situation or characters - gangsters and master thieves, or people living some kind of exotic life in Paris. This one is different.

I'd highly recommend this one.

This film isn't a 7/10 because it competes with the classic horror films of the 1930s. It's 7/10 because it's a campy delight.

Dr. Donald Blake (Arthur Franz), a science professor at Dunsfield University, receives a coelacanth - member of an ancient species of fish. A student, Jimmy, asks Blake if the fish is really a million years old. Blake replies, "It's the species that's old. No change in millions of years. See, the coelacanth is a living fossil, immune to the forces of evolution". Blake teaches his students that man is the only creature that can decide whether to evolve or devolve and that "unless we learn to control the instincts we've inherited from our ape-like ancestors, the race is doomed."

For being so philosophical, Blake is really careless in the lab. Blake sticks his cut hand into the water that held the fish and begins to feel woozy. He ends up transforming into a primitive and attacks and kills the assistant of a fellow professor. He awakens after the incident, remembering nothing. He calls the police, and they reach the brilliant conclusion that Blake is innocent and being framed by some anonymous enemy, although they have no idea who that enemy might be.

In time, a dog is accidentally exposed to the fish's blood as is a dragon fly. Both temporarily revert to primitive form. It takes time before Blake realizes that he might be the killer beast.

This is a fine, Jack Arnold B feature played with drama, even if the scientist and the police have all of the investigative talents of Frank Drebben of Police Squad. The monster, once he finally appears, is pretty scary. The fact that we don't see him for over an hour is even better, aiming for suspense rather than shock. Mr. Arnold is the "no budget" craftsman responsible for TARANTULA, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, a couple of Black Lagoon entries, THE TATTERED DRESS. And isn't there one about a guy who gets really small? Laugh all you want at the melodramatic hysterics. This is a filmmaker to reckon with.

Barney walks in on Andy in the courthouse back room patching Opie up after a schoolyard brawl - more playing than fighting apparently - and decides then and there that Andy should get remarried. He won't take no for an answer from Andy - he hasn't found the right girl yet. So Barnie tells half the town's young women that Thelma Lou had a message of vital importance to deliver to them...in Andy's living room....without telling Andy anything about it. The whole idea is to get Andy access to so many young women at one time so he could look them over. Andy is not amused.

But the next day Barnie sees Andy walking along with Opie's schoolteacher, Helen Crump. He decides to set things up so that both of them come to dinner at Thelma Lou's house. But this is where Barney has buyer's remorse. Helen admits she is not a good cook and that she eats frozen dinners and that she does not intend to quit her job when she gets married. In this case, the mid Victorian in Barney decides she will not make a good wife. But Andy disagrees. He may not be ready to marry her, but he is interested in getting to know her better. In this case, Barney won't take YES for an answer either! Complications ensue.

Barney is at his most obnoxious in this episode, sticking his nose in Andy's business in the first place and then leaving it there. At the beginning Barney tells Andy that "a man who waits too long to get married gets irritable". Andy should have turned this around on him and asked Barney why it is that HE hasn't gotten married yet. After all, he and Andy are the same age and Barney has NEVER been married. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense.

This episode is the beginning of Helen Crump being Andy's long-term love interest on the show.

...but I am saying that Kermit the Frog only needed one song to explain the difficulties of being green.

Snide remarks aside, this was probably the best possible version of this kind of thing. I felt every second of the runtime because I generally don't care for people singing at me, but I would imagine people that are into musicals are going to love this. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande both crushed this. I don't know why I was surprised at how funny Ariana is because I've seen her on SNL, and she is so funny in this.

The costumes and production design were both perfect and totally captured the spirit of the original Wizard of Oz. My only real complaint aside from the runtime is that I think this needed more Jeff Goldblum, though I do feel that way about every movie including ones where he does not appear.

Somewhere in Time (1980) is apparently a cult fave, a fantasy romance about time travel, based on the writer's own vivid dream about Maude Adams. Here we have Christopher Reeve as a writer who has a weird experience with an old lady who turns out to be a former actress named Elise McKenna. He becomes obsessed with her because of the gift she hands him and because she died that very night. Years later he self-hypnotizes himself and time travels back to 1912 where he stalks the real actress (Jane Seymour) only to learn she has been waiting for him. They filmmakers wisely skip most of the "science" here and concentrate on the romance.

The gorgeous setting of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in Michigan and perfect period costumes (Oscar nominated) lend a lush feel to this slim story. A key element is Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini Op. 43" which is beautifully complemented by John Barry's lush score. Reeve and Seymour are fine. Christopher Plummer plays Seymour's possessive manager who seems to have some foreknowledge of disaster relating to Seymour and Reeves interacting that he could only have had if he had done a little time traveling himself. Alas, this is never explored beyond a few curious lines of dialogue by Plummer.

Probably because people are expecting slasher horror and this is more subtle than that, at a time when horror stopped being subtle at all.

This tells the story of a repressed librarian in Wichita (Carrie Snodgrass) who's about to lose her job. She lives with her domineering, crippled father (Ray Milland) in a mansion. It seems she was left at the altar 20 years before when the groom just up and disappeared. She devotes her time to her job and to daddy, but daddy tries to control her every waking moment. He's even jealous of her friendship with a fellow librarian who lives with a domineering mother.

When Carrie comes home with a chimp one day, daddy goes into a tizzy. The chimp up and disappears one day while she's at work. Daddy isn't as pitiable as we think, when we learn he's not crippled at all; it's just act to keep the daughter under his control. What else why daddy have been capable of doing? Well, there's that attic....

... in that it is not that much about how the war impacts the homefront but just shows domestic situations as they exist during the war.

Theo (Lana Turner) is a popular girl who hangs out at an officer's club in New York. She meets Lieutenant Tom West (John Hodiak), and picks him from the pack of suitors that she has to marry. The sweetest part of the film is when they are on their honeymoon, getting to know each other since they hastily married. They have very different backgrounds - He's Boston born and bred, with parents who have been married 30 years. Her parents were divorced when she was an infant and mom (Natalie Schafer) has been a serial monogamist ever since.

There are a couple of unexpected turns from the beginning. Ted's father dies suddenly, and the War Dept. Cancels Ted's commission because he is an expert in lens design and his business partner, Joe (Hugh Marlowe), is an unreliable drunk - He's needed at home to work on lens designs for army equipment. The end result is the post-war post-Honeymoon part of their marriage starts sooner than originally planned.

Ted spends long hours at work, and it seems that you can take the girl out of the party but you can't take the party out of the girl. Now that's not such an unusual thing, not even in films going back to the silent era. What's different is that Turner and the script make this more of a three-dimensional situation than it usually is in movies of this era. It's part a product of the couple's hasty marriage, part Theo's upbringing where she witnessed marriage to be a transient thing that makes it hard for her to commit or be sure of anything, and partly her unrealistic expectations of just how long the honeymoon will last. Throw in a couple of iconoclastic situations involving people she looked up to and Theo is one confused girl.

This is a wartime film where the conflicts are completely emotional and not grounded in action at all. If you can deal with that you will probably enjoy it.

Just a note - Even though Natalie Schafer looks very young here, she actually was old enough to be Lana Turner's mother.

...is what this guy, Gerard Graham Dennis is more than a jewel robber. I don't know how true to life the story is, but it works on film. For example, it's a little hard to get too hot under the collar about a guy who steals luxury items like furs and jewels in a non-confrontational way (burglary) from wealthy people who likely have these items insured anyways - which is what Dennis did. Sure, he should go to prison, but it's not the kind of stuff that gets movie audiences riled.

So the film also focuses on this guy's love life, and he's a real Lothario. You don't know that at first. You think he might be sincere in his declarations of love to his landlord's daughter. But then he escapes from prison, hits her up for all the cash and valuables she has and even takes her grandmother's engagement ring promising to come back for her, and then just dumps her for some other woman he knew on the outside.

He actually marries the third woman he gets involved with - a nurse who is innocent enough to believe his spiel, and is in the process of courting a sixth woman when the law catches up with him.

David Brian is very good in the role of Dennis. He has that way about him where you never really know what is going on under the hood. He looks like he could erupt in either violence or kindness at any moment, and so it adds to the tension.

I would say that it's a very un WB-like Warner Brothers movie from the time period and has a semi-documentary feel about it, somewhat like "He Walked By Night" although Brian's jewel thief is much more communicative than Richard Basehart's monosyllabic loner character who is the featured thief in "He Walked By Night". I'd say this one is worth your while if you like crime dramas of the period.

A trio of gypsies notice an American, Michael Nash (Conway Tearle), staring at them. When Nash comes stalking around the wagon of the gypsy Zara one night, the other gypsies use this opportunity to get the drop on him and ask him what he's up to. He's a con man from the US who wants to enlist the gypsies in his latest scam. He takes them from Hungary to America. There they set up shop as a group of mystics with the woman, Zara (Aileen Pringle) as the actual psychic.

When they first arrive in the US the police show up to see if they can catch them being fakes. The police try several stunts, but the act doesn't miss a beat. This is also an opportunity for the movie audience to see how the con operates.

Then Nash gets the object of the con he's wanted all along - Doris Merrick. She's a very wealthy and rather innocent young woman who was orphaned and has been entrusted to a guardian. Her guardian has been embezzling from her estate to so as to cover his losses on Wall Street. Nash gets them both to believe that the spirit of Doris's father knows about this and wants Doris to demand her assets be taken from the custody of her guardian. Once Doris has these assets Nash and the gypsies plan to steal her wealth and leave her flat.

Doris's authenticity and belief in him suddenly causes Nash some unexpected misgivings on robbing her blind. Zara suspects that there is more to her and Nash than him being her self-appointed personal protector, and the old green eyed monster rears its ugly head. Complications ensue.

The film has an ending that doesn't really fit that has all of the hallmarks of an MGM poll tested happy ending that doesn't make sense from the story's point of view but was probably something that test audiences said that they wanted to see.

Conway Tearle, if you've seen him in some of his early talking appearances when he still had leading man status, seems quite bland to have the part of the hero. I guess it helped that he had a leading role in "Gold Diggers of Broadway" (1929) which made more money for Warner Bros. Than any other film until Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938.

Leading ladies Aileen Pringle (Zara) and Gladys Hulette (Doris) both lived well into their 90s, although acting had passed them by early in the sound film era.

... and it even made an appearance on Eddie Muller's Noir Alley. But even he seemed to think it was a weird bit of business.

Jeffrey Andrews (Chester Morris) is a writer of good books that don't sell, so he's trying his hand at cheap crime fiction that perhaps will. He's going to see his publisher about an advance and tearing up his contract. Why he thinks the publisher would do both I have no idea. While he's in his publisher's office, to try and get that advance, he relates to him a tale that he devises off the cuff about a murder victim found in a room locked and bolted from the inside. How did the murderer escape? The audience doesn't hear that part and we only see Andrews after the encounter when he goes into the bar on the ground floor and proceeds to get even more drunk than he already was.

Then the publisher's secretary, Evelyn Green (Constance Dowling), stops by the same bar for an after work drink. This is where things get really weird. She falls all over Andrews. She only knows him from when he tried to burst in on her boss, the publisher, several hours before. Andrews is drunk, an alcoholic even when he's not technically drunk, flat broke, and apparently got dressed up in his best suit that morning without bothering to shower or shave so he is sweaty and his face is covered in stubble. In short, he's disgusting. What does this pretty and classy looking woman want with this guy?

Andrews says he's going back up to the publisher's office and try again to get his contract torn up, then cut to the police interrogating Andrews. Why? Apparently the publisher was found murdered in his office on the 32nd floor with the door bolted from the inside.

Andrews thinks that maybe the secretary did it since he thinks he told her his "locked room" plot, but he doesn't know. What's worse, he doesn't remember the conclusion of his story himself, or how the murderer escaped since he was drunk at the time he told the tale. Complications ensue.

This little B film is just full of weirdness. For one, at some point, Andrews gets in a struggle with someone who has a gun, and gets shot in the shoulder. He gets away, but for the next five minutes he narrates about the horrible pain and how he feels faint from loss of blood. Then the story takes a different direction and Andrews seems to forget all about the bullet in his shoulder for the rest of the film. And on it goes.

It was never clear to me WHY the police were so sure Andrews did this. They didn't even know about Andrews and his "locked door mystery" plot when they arrested him, and the victim was widely disliked. I can see why Andrews thought he did this, but nobody else.

I did like the classic noir atmosphere and especially James Bell as the homicide detective. Bell played it most unconventionally like a world weary preacher who has forgotten why he is even in this line of work at this point. But as for the plot - Most of Chester Morris's Boston Blackie scripts seem to have had more work put into them.

In an obscure European kingdom, the princess Orsini (Catherine Dale Owen) carries on a clandestine affair with the dashing Captain Kovacs. Her mother apparently knows all about this romance, and convinces her to break it off given that the princess is to soon be engaged to Prince Luigi Caprilli (Tyrell Davis) as part of an arrangement between her kingdom and his. Afterwards, news comes to the princess that Kovacs is actually a famous confidence artist and that, as a result, unwanted publicity may come to the kingdom and perhaps bring the relationship between Kovacs and the princess to light. Complications ensue.

This is the talkie debut of John Gilbert, the film that allegedly brought down his career, and yet I really don't see anything wrong with his voice given what he has to work with as far as dialogue, which at times is ridiculous. But then I already knew what John Gilbert sounded like. Maybe people were expecting something like Clark Gables growly low pitched voice? At any rate, Gilbert had leading roles at MGM for four more years through 1933 and had a leading role in his last film in 1934, so it's not like this film completely ruined him.

Like most early talkie films the thing is entirely too talkie. There is tons of dialogue that really serves no purpose and many scenes are over long and tiresome. The princess and her mother have the most screen time, and they seem more like much older sister and much younger sister than mother and daughter given their casual way with each other.

Tyrell Davis is excellent in his small role as Prince Luigi, Princess Orsini's betrothed. He is terrific at being as desirable as a plate of cold scrambled eggs. MGM made good use of this lack of chemistry between Davis and Owens when they teamed them in another early talkie the following year - "Strictly Unconventional" in which their lack of chemistry is the central theme.

If you are an early talkie fan or just curious about this important entry in John Gilbert's filmography I'd recommend it, but do realize that pacing wise it is a long hard slog.

... that being Faith, who has been in a coma since last May after her almost-fight-to-the-death with Buffy. In this episode, Faith awakens from her coma, not in the best of moods. She beats up someone, steals their clothes, and sets out to get revenge - for lots of things. First off, since there aren't tributes to the Mayor in demon form everywhere, she can pretty much tell that he must be dead.

A demon gives her a "gift" from the mayor. She kills the demon and takes the box. There's a video inside and she plays the tape. It's the mayor, and his logic is kind of impressive. When he realized he failed to give Faith what she "deserved," and Buffy got the loving family, the mayor thought of a way to reverse that, get Faith the loving family, and condemn Buffy to the life she had created for Faith. How did he do that? Watch and find out.

It was good to see the mayor once again. He's just so cheery and fatherly that I pretty much don't even care that he's evil.

This episode of Buffy confuses the viewer right off the bat with a changed intro and prominent scenes of Jonathan - who since season 2 has only shown up sporadically.

What's happened is that Jonathan, during the process of getting counseled due to his attempt at suicide the previous year, met a fellow counselee who introduced him to magic and specifically to a spell that bends reality to one's liking. Jonathan's spell bends reality to where he is the best at everything - musician, author, Academy award winning director, and warrior in the fight against evil. And, of course, nobody realizes they are in this absurdist reality and that's part of the comedy.

Part of the fun is that Jonathan really does get some things right. He's right about Adam's power source and that being the secret to killing him, and he's right about Riley and Buffy's relationship. The spell really did change him. It didn't just make everyone think that he changed.

The catch in all of this is that the spell that made Jonathan the best of everything has created the worst of everything - a hideous monster that goes about wreaking wanton destruction. Complications ensue.

Who plays C&FW Railroad executive Homer Bedloe.

The Hooterville Cannonball has been running separated from the "main line" of the railroad for years due to a failed trestle that was never replaced. It thus runs between the wide spot in the road, Hooterville, and the small town of Pixley...and nowhere else. One day the president of C&FW Norman Curtis is giving a presentation concerning his railroad when he notices what he thinks is a speck or fault in his map. He then discovers that the speck is the Hooterville line, separated from the rest of the railroad, and sends executive Homer Bedloe (Charles Lane) to investigate. Bedloe is not impressed with the slipshod operation he finds.

Charles Lane was always a supporting character - He usually played gruff humorless characters because he looked like a gruff humorless character. The character of Homer Bedloe was close to a leading role whenever he appeared on Petticoat Junction and he played it memorably, always unimpressed by the gang at the Shady Rest Hotel, and yet always thwarted by them in his attempts to shut down this stretch of railroad that brought nothing into corporate coffers back when corporate coffers were not so demanding as they are today.

This is the second part of a two part episode concerning Norman Curtis, who is president of the C&FW railroad. He came to Hooterville to shut down the Cannonball, but circumstances have it that everyone thinks he's a hobo instead and he's been letting them think that. He's become enamored of the simple life and all things Hooterville.

The engineer on the Cannonball allows him to run the train, but he breaks the throttle. At this point Curtis has to reveal who he really is, mainly so that he can use his connections to repair the Cannonball. But still nobody believes him. Complications ensue.

One thing that appears to be dropped this week is the budding romance between Kate and Norman Curtis. I guess the writers figured there was no place for that storyline to really go.

It's also funny to watch Uncle Joe grouse about feeding Curtis, who he thinks is a freeloader. Joe resents Curtis because he believes him to be what he is - just another mouth to feed.

Last week, Homer Bedloe wasn't able to shut the Cannonball down. So this week the president of the C& FW Railroad, Norman Curtis will go to Hooterville and take care of business.

He arrives via helicopter due to the railroad's remote location, but he falls down a hill, ripping and soiling his clothes in the process. Also, he has lost his wallet. So when he waves down the Cannonball, all on board just think that he's a hobo. Kate's onboard and asks Floyd and Charlie not to throw him off the train. Curtis is at first going to tell them who he is, but instead decides to work incognito.

So it ends up being the old story of the "man in a hurry" who learns to appreciate the rustic simple life, in this case of The Shady Rest Hotel and Hooterville. The complicating factor? It appears that Norman is starting to fall for Kate, given her gracious attitude and kindness towards him, who she thinks is a simple hobo.

Will complications ensue? Watch and find out.

This isn't the tale of a heated argument where someone shoves or hits someone else just a little too hard and covers up the crime. This is a story of cold-blooded murder right out of the gate. Alex Benedict (John Cassavetes) is a world famous conductor married to the daughter (Blythe Danner) of the very wealthy woman (Myrna Loy) who owns the orchestra that he conducts. His mistress, a very talented concert pianist, is demanding that he leave his wife or else she will make a very public proclamation and blow up his life and career. So he murders her in such a way that he seems to have a perfect alibi. He makes it look like suicide. He makes one mistake - but even manages to cover that up by showing up at the crime scene as the police are investigating and correcting his mistake.

Unfortunately for Alex Benedict, Columbo enters stage left into this investigation and gives the death the intense examination some other homicide detective might not have given it and is doubting - for good reason - that it was suicide.

As usual, it's obvious that Columbo suspects Alex Benedict is the murderer from the beginning because of his trademark constant harassment of the guy. However, it is not obvious as to why he believes this. The clues that Columbo picks up on indicate that someone murdered her, but not who. I'd give this one a ten if that had been the case.

This episode was written by Stephen Bochco (LA Law, NYPD Blue, etc.) during the first decade of his notable career and more surprisingly was directed by Nicholas Colasanto ( Coach of Cheers fame).

John Cassavetes made an outstanding villain and his chemistry with Peter Falk - they were great friends - shined through. I'd highly recommend this one.

This episode starts out with a case that has nothing to do with murder. Perry has a client who has been badly injured in a hit and run automobile accident. He puts an ad in the paper asking anyone who has information on who did this to contact his office. He receives a perfumed envelope in the mail. In it there is a housekey and a note saying that the license number of the car that hit his client can be found in the back of the address book of one Elaine Barton, whose housekey was in the envelope.

Perry goes there, but finds Elaine there and knocks rather than use the key. He asks Elaine about the accident - she knows nothing about it. When she is in the kitchen getting them both coffee he looks for the address book, finds it, and finds the license plate number. The car involved in the accident belongs to the wealthy Steven Argyle. And guess who his chauffeur is - Elaine's estranged husband, Harry Pitkin. Harry is blackmailing Elaine over the fact that they never got a proper divorce and now she's dating a man who wants to marry her, Ross Hollister. Murder comes into the picture when Elaine comes home one day to find Harry dead on her bedroom floor, shot with her gun.

Is this just a case of the smallest world you've ever seen and a bunch of coincidences, or is something else afoot? In this case, help comes from one of the suspects with a most interesting twist at the end that I never saw coming. Highly recommended.

These season one Perry Masons are a bit different. Perry has a flirtatious way about him when it comes to Della Street and is much more open to bending the laws to protect his client. Also, this first season uses material direct from Stanley Earl Gardner, thus the plots are easier to understand and not so serpentine as those in later seasons.

Webb and his partner are called to the scene of the shooting death of a woman. Her husband sits calmly on the couch and describes what happened - They had been fighting all day and then his wife grabbed his revolver out of the desk and shot herself in the kitchen. Apparently the couple argued constantly. The fights were so loud all of the neighbors were aware of their constant bickering. At one time the woman went to a neighbor's apartment claiming that she was so afraid of her husband that she thought he might kill her.

A preliminary investigation indicates that the husband is lying and that he was the one who killed her and that it was not a suicide as he claims. Yet, even after being confronted by the fact that the evidence does not support his claims he still insists his wife committed suicide. Complications ensue.

These early Dragnets don't have the budget that the later ones had in the late 60s and 70s. With just a couple of sets and very little action, this half hour show manages to be quite compelling.