Ellery Queen: Don't Look Behind You

This is clearly a pilot intended for the NBC MYSTERY MOVIE series, which began 2 months earlier in late 1971. While the first season had 3 shows on Wednesdays, the second season moved those to Sundays and added a 4th, while adding 3 new ones on Wednesdays. (Yes, unless you're a fanatic about them like me, chances are you need a scorecard to keep track.) "But it didn't sell". And watching the first 5 minutes, I could tell you WHY.

Barry Shear, who did a ton of TV (starting out in comedy & variety shows) just had too much "style" and "gimmicks" before and during the opening credits, with still shots, B&W, short clips, and what I personally found was an intensely-annoying animated cartoon thing involving a many-headed snake. I found myself yelling at my computer screen, "When does the STORY start?"

I've been watching every Ellery Queen movie I can find online; some are fun, some are terrific, some are just annoying. Between the various movies in the 1930s & 40s, plus no less than 4 separate TV series in the 1950s, Peter Lawford was actually the 9th actor to play Ellery on-screen! And while they most definitely hit paydirt with #10, just this moment, all I want to say is, Lawford is NO Ralph Bellamy. HE was too old, also, but not this old, NOT this smug, over-confident and aloof, and NOT this... English. Seriously, what was anybody thinking when they decided to change the relationship between Inspector Queen and his SON, and make it a questionable uncle-nephew thing? (I have to assume someone cast Lawford first and then everything else flowed from that.)

Harry Morgan is PERFECT as Inspector Queen. I can easily see him and Charlye Grapewin-- or David Wayne-- as being the SAME character.

Once past the annoying style & casting problems, the rest of the film isn't bad. But-- and I must stress this-- it suffers from a problem MANY of the NBC Mystery Movies did in the 70s-- being too long. When they started, a 90-minute format (with about 75 minutes of film and 15 of commercials) was not unique, but was still unusual. And on repeatedly re-watching the 2nd season of "McCLOUD" (1971-72), I've noted that maybe half of those feel like they were written for a one-hour format-- then, PAINFULLY padded out for the 90-minute slot. Later, when some fool at NBC decided "all" the movies would be in 2-hour slots, you had the same problem amplified, with 75-minute scripts suddenly having to be padded out to 100 minutes. Well, THIS Ellery Queen movie felt REALLY padded out to me! I kept seeing all number of things that could have (should have) easily been CUT, which would have improved the film in the process. (Usually, episodes butchered for syndication murder the flow of the stories-- but this one, it would have helped.)

Among the highlights for me were the cast (E. G. Marshall, Skye Aubrey, Bill Zuckert, Bob Hastings). And then of course there was Stephanie Powers. No surprise, Barry Shear directed her in 7 episodes of "THE GIRL FROM UNCLE", and, one of my all-time favorite episodes of "McCLOUD"-- "Butch Cassidy Rides Again"-- one of the longer ones that DID NOT feel padded out! Funny enough, that one also involved computer analysis. Maybe Shear was really into that?

I recognized Jerry Fielding doing the music, as some of his jazz riffs sounded identical to ones he used in the Dirty Harry movie "THE ENFORCER".

I also recognized the observation platform of The Empire State Building, where that really-suspenseful scene was shot. (I've been up there twice.)

All in all, the Jim Hutton-David Wayne "ELLERY QUEEN" was way better than this, DID go to a series (albeit a regular, one-hour format), and DID deserve to go on a lot longer than it did.

I like Peter Lawford, and I like David Wayne, and I liked this movie.

The main reason I remember it so fondly was that many, many years ago there was a snowstorm in Frazee, Minnesota, and our local tv channel was down, so they spent the entire day rerunning this movie! I saw it five times!

Peter Lawford as Ellery Queen is called in by his half-uncle, Harry Morgan as Inspector Queen, to investigate a serial killer dubbed 'the Hydra' who is terrorizing New York City.

It's based on the Ellery Queen novel Cat of Many Tails. Published in 1949, it may have been the first mystery novel to deal seriously with serial killers, and it made use of several novelties in telling its tale, including lengthy vignettes of the victims to begin the book. By 1971, serial killers were much more a commonplace of the world and fiction, and this TV movie soon gets bogged down in cliches. Lawford in a ridiculous toupee is poorly cast. While there was extensive shooting in Manhattan to provide atmosphere, the pieces are put together in a way that is clearly wrong; a commonplace of movie geography, alas. Finally, the solution to the mystery of who the murderer was turned out not to be too difficult. I had it figured out by the 40-minute mark. Well in advance of the intrepid crime novelist. With E. G. Marshall and Stefanie Power.

When NBC began the television series in 1975, they wisely used Jim Hutton as Ellery, and David Wayne as the Inspector.

When I got my first VCR in 1980, I set out to get as many detective films as possible, and looked forward to each as a gem in my collection. After reading about several such films, and having seen the Jim Hutton/David Wayne series, I thought when I found that Harry Morgan would be Inspector Queen, I knew there would be some fun watching it. I was not disappointed with Morgan's performance, but Peter Lawford seemed an unlikely choice to play the crime solver, Ellery Queen. I could easily see why this TV pilot was not picked up as a series. The casting. Simple as that. Lawford was all wrong. Now, I have yet to see more than still photos and reviews of the other E.Q. movies or several TV series (there were at least 4 different Ellerys) so I cannot compare one to the other, but I can tell you that I remember a TV guide article written by the son of one of the two Ellery Queen creators (I forget whether it was Manfred B. Lee or Frederick Dannay) and he said that his dad would agree that Jim Hutton was the closest to what Ellery Queen would be, and also David Wayne as the irascible Inspector. (Both actors for Inspector Queen were perfectly cast in my humble opinion.) It was a fairly good mystery as I remember it, and will have to watch it again sometime if I can ever dig it out of my over-sized collection. I remember loving the little animated "bumper" that was used at each commercial break. The book title was something about a "cat-o-nine tales." (Not that is not a typo either.) Now if only we could have seen the series that almost happened starring the seventh of a ton, orchid loving, gourmand detective Nero Wolfe, with Orson Welles (another time it was to be Raymond Burr) and John Ritter (still another time, Bill Cosby) as Archie Goodwin.

But that's another topic altogether.

Don't Look Behind You does deserve to be judged separately, but the comparisons will be inevitable, it's just that when you watch this film and then the TV series or vice versa it is easy to see which is superior(in this case the TV series with Jim Hutton, one of my personal favourite shows of the 70s). Don't Look Behind You is not bad though, certainly better than it is given credit for despite its debits being really quite problematic. It is far from cheap, the soft grained image has a real charm to it, the lighting does give off a sinister and not too obvious atmosphere and it is evocative detail-to-period wise. The music has a real suavity and liveliness, there is some amusing smart dialogue especially between Ellery and Inspector Queen and the story and mystery is mostly diverting and keeps us guessing. The animation images for the hydra are genuinely creepy and still look good today, and the acting is serviceable with solid if fairly careful support acting and good chemistry between them. Harry Morgan is very good as Inspector Queen and Stefanie Powers is beautifully seductive. Peter Lawford from personal opinion however is miscast, that he is too old is not so much a problem but, while there are moments where he is very suave(and he has a pleasant speaking voice), he does come across as too aloof and too self-assured. The opening credits are cool but go on for far too long, the suspense is rather dragged out at times and when my house mates and I watched this all of us correctly guessed the identity of the killer too early. Some of the lighting at the end is a little too bright and somewhat surrealist as well. In conclusion, better than it's given credit for but not great. 6/10 Bethany Cox