Dagger of the Mind

I'm a HUGE fan of Columbo, but this is weak; actually the only bad episode. Please (Rosabel from Mass) don't blame us Brits for being pompous, quaint, obsessed with ritual and stuck-in-the-past. We're not! But this is how you Americans love to think of us, and this movie after all is an American production. I've noticed time and time and time again that whenever a US tv show does an episode in England it's always set in London, with a cast full of butlers and lords and sirs and of course the essential shots of Buckingham Palace, cavalry and bands, not to mention the deferential working class tugging their forelocks and mumbling "cor blimey guv". If I may quote Hannibal Lecter: "Tedious. Very tedious." Peter Falk simply wasn't on screen for long enough and that was an additional flaw. As for his Scotland Yard counterpart, Detective Chief Superintendents DO NOT scurry around chasing villains. The rank is equal to Lt Col. They're senior managers. "Dagger Of The Mind" actually annoyed me from start to finish which is a shame as most other Columbo movies are SO good. The only thing I did enjoy was seeing the wonderful Wilfred Hyde White, even though he played a butler (yawn).

Columbo shows up in London without his suitcase as even when this was filmed, they lost them. He says it is his wife's case but why he came to London without his wife when I am sure Scotland Yard would have paid for both of them? This is a nice tourist episode as a lot of Londons sights are shown. The cast is great as almost the entire cast became well known to American audiences after this was made. Honor Blackman is a bonus as she is a great performer and she was already known as Pussy Galore before this.

The plot on this one is a little weak in that the murder is an accident and Columbo has to result to trickery to trip up the murder solution rather than using his usual proved police methods of homicide investigation. Then again, as this episode was done more for the famous cast and London scenery, I didn't really mind.

I may be biased, but I have yet to see a Columbo episode I absolutely hate. Even with its problems, I did like Dagger of the Mind. It is quite slow in pace, with a rather thin plot and the build up to the finale I agree could have been better. But the scenery and photography are wonderful, the script does have its humorous moments, the direction is good enough and the music is effective. The acting is fine, Peter Falk is great no problem with him whatsoever, while Honor Blackman is wonderful, looks beautiful and has some memorable scenes with Columbo. Richard Basehart overdoes it a bit, but he seems to be having fun too. Overall, worth watching if not the best Columbo. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Richard Basehart and Honor Blackman are Nicholas Frame and Lilian Stanhope, a famous husband-and-wife acting team about to do "Macbeth." Just before dress rehearsal, Sir Roger Haversham (John Williams), the impresario behind this production, discovers they have tricked him – Lilian has seduced him for his money and Nicholas put her up to it. He secretly visits her dressing room to tell her the show is off. Nicholas joins them, and the three wind up in a scuffle that ends when Lilian hits Sir Roger on the head with a cold cream jar, accidentally killing him. They move Sir Roger's body back to his home and make it look as if he fell down a flight of stairs. Too bad for them our rumpled Lt. Columbo, visiting London as a guest of Scotland Yard, brings his sharp eye to this case.

Some English IMDb posters have already noted that this is a shallow and condescending view of Londoners, and I believe them. Nothing about this episode rings true, and the plot is thin stuff.

Basehart and Blackman have no trouble playing affected stars, but their roles are caricatures of actors, not real people. There's no fun in watching Columbo play cat-and-mouse with a couple of cartoons. In fact, this episode starts going badly the moment he enters the scene. We first see him bumbling and inadvertently creating havoc at the airport, a would-be comic sequence that falls flat. Columbo is funny only when his seeming ineptitude causes his quarry to underestimate him. Whenever the writers have him clowning like this, you wonder if they underestimate him, too. They even having him stumbling through crowds, trying to take pictures of all the London landmarks. For all these scenes add to the story, the producers might have scrapped the location shooting and spent the money on a better script.

This whole thing just feels like a cheap imitation of an English murder mystery down to the unsatisfying conclusion at a wax museum. If Basehart and Blackman weren't having such obvious fun with their roles (they even get to play a little Shakespeare), this would be a complete bore. Columbo may be a fish out of water in England, but so is "Columbo."

MISCELLANY. This is the second episode so far to feature an unpremeditated murder. The first was in "Death Lends a Hand."

Early on in the Columbo series, the producers obviously felt confident enough to take the "man in the mac" out of his familiar American environment and place him in London, to solve a murder - nevertheless, the results are decidedly mixed.

The episode boasts a wonderfully hammy performance from Richard Basehart, as one of the murderers (ably assisted by British actress Honor Blackman)and there are some very humourous scenes as we see Columbo cause mayhem at Heathrow airport and also as he scours London to take snapshots with his brother-in-law's camera.

Notwithstanding these strengths, the adventure is rather thinly plotted and uncertainly paced (the finale really comes without any significant build-up); and the murder set-up itself does not render the ingenious array of clues typical of many of the best Columbo adventures (all we really have here is a turned-over book, an unbroken set of reading glasses, rain spots on a car and an umbrella!).

Additionally, the episode does have a fragmented feel to it owing to the fact that not all of it was filmed in London (the scenes in the London pub are somewhat exaggerated and many of the character actors have awfully manufactured Cockney accents).

This is an average Columbo adventure, but still better than many of the detective shows of its kind.