cranvillesquare

Patrick McGoohan puts in one of the best small-screen roles of his career, in my opinion at least. The supporting cast are excellent as well; Falk steps up to the bar set by McGoohan and the writers gave a five-star account of themselves. My favorite Columbo episode, bar none. Special note - the late Bob Crane of Hogan's Heroes makes a posthumous audio appearance, here, at about the 00:30:00 mark where the soundtrack plays the staccato drum music from his 1965-'71 TV series. In addition to being an accomplished actor and popular California radio DJ, Crane was a talented drummer. Anyone hearing this will recognize the opening (played by Crane) from every episode of Hogan's Heroes, where the POWs answer reveille and fall out for roll-call.

I haven't heard these guys' names in ages, but they immediately brought back memories of early 1960s afternoons at the movies. Our town theatre was the Majestic (West Springfield, Mass.), a typical second-run small-town outlet. It was the perfect way for parents to get the kids out of their hair from after lunch to suppertime. For 50¢ per rugrat, at 12:30 or 1:00 PM one got a newsreel (yep, they still were around then); a cartoon and two shorts OR a 20-minute genuine Three Stooges flick; and the double feature...usually movies that were several months behind the big-city movie theatres. With inflation, that 50¢ is more like $6.00 in 2025 dollars. Can't beat that with a stick. Really, what are movies going for these days - $25.00 or more? Mack & Myer for Hire were a bargain-basement Abbott & Costello, but hey - when you were 7 or 8 years old they were funny. Appreciate the memories.

Season Five sees the A-Team morph from Robin Hood and his Merry Men, helping the downtrodden and helpless, into Mission Impossible working for a real slimeball known as General Stockwell. The premise here is sheer silliness; even McHale's Navy did the trite old "white man mistaken for god by island natives" routine - and, I think, even Tim Conway did it better than Dwight Schultz. The plot's weak, the acting (such as it was) seemed phoned in, and I was left at the end with the question: "How do I get this hour of my life back?"