Ransom for a Dead Man

TV Movie
1971
Approved
1h 38m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Lee Grant in Ransom for a Dead Man (1971)

After killing her boring husband and disposing of the body, a supposedly brilliant tort attorney fakes his kidnapping and keeps the ransom money. The FBI may be fooled, but not Columbo.After killing her boring husband and disposing of the body, a supposedly brilliant tort attorney fakes his kidnapping and keeps the ransom money. The FBI may be fooled, but not Columbo.After killing her boring husband and disposing of the body, a supposedly brilliant tort attorney fakes his kidnapping and keeps the ransom money. The FBI may be fooled, but not Columbo.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.6/10

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
The morning after Leslie makes the "drop", Margaret is watching Double Indemnity (1944), a movie about a woman who kills her husband to collect on an insurance policy.

Goofs
When Leslie Williams leaves her husband's 1971 Lincoln sedan at the stop sign and goes to a mailbox to mail the ransom note, she is startled by an approaching car. The car is a Corvette. However, as the car is shown driving away, the rear of the car is a 1971 Lincoln sedan.

Quotes
Agent Carlson: Let's understand this one thing: if you start harassing this woman, I'm going to take it upstairs.
Lt. Columbo: Ah, just one minute, uh, Mr. Carlson. You see, it's like this: this is not just a kidnapping; this is a murder now... and I kinda figure that's my department. I'll see ya 'round.

Connections
Features Double Indemnity (1944)

User reviews55

Review

Featured review

8/10

What?! A lawyer that is evil?! Say it isn't so!

Three years after making "Prescription: Murder", the character Lieutenant Columbo was revived for a second made for TV film. This time, the formula convinced the network to greenlight the show and soon it became a regular on the weekly "Mystery Movie".

Lee Grant plays a very skilled trial lawyer who is used to winning. However, one thing in her life is NOT perfect. She's married to an older man and now that he no longer is useful in forwarding her career, she's bored with him. Instead of divorce, however, you KNOW it will end in murder. After all, it's "Columbo"!

The story is well written, the acting by Grant and the rest is quite nice and it's well worth your time. My only quibble is early in the show, you see the Lieutenant making an illegal search of a locker. With no search warrant or apparent need to search it, he did anyway.

By the way, on IMDB this is listed as the first installment of "Columbo"....but as I mentioned above, it's actually the second.