The Laughing Policeman and Warning Shot

The Laughing Policeman (1973). Walter Matthau starred in two of the finest crime dramas of the 1970s: Charley Varrick (1973) and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974). Sandwiched between those classics, he made The Laughing Policeman, a solid crime picture steeped in urban grittiness. Matthau plays Jake Martin, a San Francisco police detective investigating the brutal murders of a bus driver and his passengers. The case becomes personal quickly when one of the victims turns out to be Jake's partner, who was looking into one of Jake’s old unsolved cases on his own. While the police department mounts a large scale effort to find the killer, Jake follows his own leads--while also dealing with his meddling new partner Larsen (Bruce Dern). The Laughing Policeman differs from most Matthau movies in that its protagonist is something of an enigma. He ignores his wife and teenage son, sleeps in a separate room in his home, and has no close friends at work. He wasn't even close to his dead partner. He definitely doesn't want a bigoted, violent, loud-mouthed new partner--but his evolving relationship with Larsen is the best part of The Laughing Policeman. Bruce Dern injects life into every frame and counterbalances Matthau's low-key performance. Director Stuart Rosenberg, perhaps best known for Cool Hand Luke, effectively contrasts the colorful neon lights of the city with its dour underside. The Laughing Policeman was based on a 1968 Swedish novel written by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. It was one of ten books featuring detective police detective Martin Beck, who was renamed for the film adaptation. 

Warning Shot (1967). Released during the final season of The Fugitive, Warning Shot features David Jansen as L.A. police detective Tom Valens, who kills a burglar in self-defense outside an apartment complex. The problem is that the “thief” was actually a prominent physician and no one can find the gun that Valens claims he saw. When a politically ambitious D.A. charges Valens with manslaughter, the veteran detective sets out to clear his name. Although released theatrically, Warning Shot looks and feels like an above-average made-for-TV movie. Many of the supporting players were working mostly in television at the time. Some of their appearances amount to little more than cameos, such as Walter Pidgeon as a lawyer, Eleanor Parker as the victim’s non-grieving widow, and Joan Collins as Valens’ estranged wife. Janssen is fine as the world-weary detective, but it's the kind of the role he played often in his career. George Grizzard nearly steals the film as a self-proclaimed ladies man who may be involved in shady dealings and Stefanie Powers has some good scenes with Janssen. At its best, Warning Shot has a late 1960s L.A. vibe reminiscent of Harper. It's reasonably engrossing, but the cast is the best reason to see it. 

The Five Best Episodes of "Banacek"

Banacek with his trademark cigar.

George Peppard starred as free-lance, Boston-based insurance investigator Thomas Banacek in a pilot movie and 16 episodes of Banacek. The series aired as part of the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie in 1972-74. He was assisted in each episode by his friend, bookstore owner (and researcher) Felix (Murray Matheson) and chauffeur Jay (Ralph Manza). The episodes were typically 75 minutes (without commercials) and focused on elaborate thefts. Here are our picks for the five best episodes:

Stefanie Powers.

1. Let's Hear It for a Living Legend  - A professional football player disappears from the field during a nationally televised game. An ingenious, yet deceptively simple, crime highlights this episode that also features Stefanie Powers as a guest star. She and series star George Peppard have great chemistry; it's a shame she couldn't return for a second outing. An added bonus for NFL fans is the brief appearances from real-life former players John Brodie, Ben Davidson, and Deacon Jones.

2. No Stone Unturned - A massive three-ton piece of modern art is stolen from a museum. We're talking an object so large that the museum's glass front had to be removed so the artwork could be emplaced by a crane. So how was it nabbed during an opening night party without anyone knowing? I admit that my enjoyment of this episode was enhanced by the fact that I figured out how the basics of how the theft was accomplished!

Margot Kidder.

3. A Million the Hard Way - A Las Vegas casino has one million dollars stolen from a tamper-proof display case in the middle of a busy room with an armed guard on duty. This may be the most complex caper in the Banacek series. Plus, Margot Kidder is on hand as a part-time photographer, displaying the kind of spunk that would earn her the role of Lois Lane in Superman (1978).

4. Fly Me — If You Can Find Me - A jet has to make an emergency landing at a small desert airport. One pilot stays with the aircraft while the other crew members spend the night in a nearby motel. The next morning, the airplane and the pilot are gone! This is another crime which is clever despite its simplicity. If you think about it, there's really only one way the plane could have been stolen. But, in this case, another question is why was the plane stolen? The above-average guest star cast features Sterling Hayden and a pre-Dallas Victoria Principal.

5. Now You See Me, Now You Don't - An amateur magician, wanted for embezzling, disappears from a theatre surrounded by the police. This caper employs a trick featured prominently in one of Agatha Christie's mystery novels. It works effectively here, though there's a secondary impact that's pretty hard to swallow (no plot spoilers!).

Snack-sized Film Reviews: "Horror at 37,000 Feet" and "Ellery Queen: Don't Look Behind You"

Hey, something's wrong with this plane!

The Horror at 37,000 Feet. What can you say about a movie in which William Shatner gives the most credible performance? That’s the challenge with The Horror at 37,000 Feet, a 1973 made-for-TV film with a better reputation than it deserves. It makes one wonder if the film’s admirers have actually sat through all 73 minutes. The premise shows promise: An airplane departs London with a handful of passengers and cargo consisting of remnants from an abbey used by Druids for sacrificial rituals. It’s not long before the plane comes to a standstill mid-flight, the cabin temperature drops to icy depths, and possessed passengers start spewing Latin. The cast consists of TV veterans Chuck Connors, Buddy Ebsen, Roy Thinnes, Paul Winfield, Will Hutchins, and Shatner. They struggle with poorly-developed characters, bad dialogue, and inane plotting. At one point, Connors’ pilot copes with the situation by telling the stewardesses to offer free alcoholic beverages! Only Shatner rises above these ruins as a defrocked priest who ultimately takes matters into his own hands. My advice is to steer clear of The Horror at 37,000 Feet and seek out three other nifty made-for-TV terror tales:  Gargoyles (1972), Trilogy of Terror (1975), and Spectre (1977).

I don't think a single strand of
Lawford's hair moves during the film.

Ellery Queen: Don’t Look Behind You. Before NBC launched the popular Ellery Queen series with Jim Hutton in 1975, it made an earlier TV movie with Peter Lawford as the literary detective. Ellery Queen: Don’t Look Behind You (1971) was intended as a pilot for a prospective series that never materialized. It’s easy to see why, although it’s not a total disaster. Based on the 1949 Ellery Queen novel Cat of Many Tails, the plot revolves around a series of apparently unrelated NYC murders committed by a killer dubbed “The Hydra” by the press. The connection between the crimes is a clever one, but it’s revealed with almost half the running time remaining. Even worse, it doesn't take much deduction to figure out the killer’s identity (there are only two viable suspects and one is much too obvious). Unlike Hutton’s 1940s-set series, Don’t Look Behind You is a contemporary mystery and Ellery has been transformed into a ladies man. In lieu of his father, Inspector Queen (wonderfully played by David Wayne in Hutton’s show), Harry Morgan plays an uncle that works for the police department. Lawford and Morgan don’t really click and Stefanie Powers is wasted as a suspect that gets involved with Ellery. Although the teleplay is credited to Ted Leighton, Columbo creators William Link and Richard Levinson may have penned an earlier draft. In an interview on the Ellery Queen TV series DVD boxed set, William Link mentions working on an Ellery Queen movie. However, the script was rewritten while he and Levinson were vacationing in Europe. They had their names removed from it. Given the timing, I suspect he was referring to Ellery Queen: Don’t Look Behind You.

Get Ready for a Palm Springs Weekend!

Stefanie Powers and Troy Donahue.

As soon as Troy Donahue starts warbling "Live Young" over the opening credits, it's clear that you'll either find Palm Springs Weekend to be nostalgic fun or a dated disaster. I fall into the former camp; I hold a special affection for the fluffy teen pics of the 1960s, from classics like Beach Blanket Bingo to lesser-known imitations like A Swingin' Summer. Unlike many of those youth films, Palm Springs Weekend isn't a musical, though it does boast the only known duet between Ty (Bronco) Hardin and Jerry Van Dyke. Plus, it offers something that its competitors can't--a wealth of promising young performers who were all under contract to Warner Bros. at the time.

Ty Hardin and Connie Stevens.

Written by Earl Hamner, Jr. (who would later create The Waltons), Palm Springs Weekend opens with the spring vacation invasion of the famed California resort city. College basketball star Jim Munroe (Donahue) and his teammates believe they have elluded their coach en route from L.A. to Palm Springs. Alas, their crafty coach (Jack Weston) is onboard the bus, too, and his presence puts a crimp in their plans. That doesn't stop Jim from meeting Gail (Connie Stevens), who also claims to be a college student seeking fun in the sun.

Robert Conrad as the rich bad boy.

But romance isn't in the cards for Jim and Gail. She becomes wooed by both a rich bad boy (Robert Conrad) and a nice Hollywood stunt man named Stretch (Hardin). Meanwhile, Jim hooks up with Palm Springs local Bunny (Stefanie Powers), whose father is the grumpy chief of police. As if there was any doubt that love is the air, Coach Campbell becomes smitten with the motel owner (Carole Cook) and Jim's pal Biff (Van Dyke) finds love with Gail's roommate Amanda (Zeme North). Just to make sure things don't get too icky with all the romance, there's a young brat named Boom Boom (Billy Mumy), who wreaks havoc by turning the swimming pool into a giant bubble bath.

Yes, Palm Springs Weekend is frequently silly, but the peppy young cast keeps it entertaining and never lets the proceedings turn into a spoof. There's even a modest amount of depth to some of the characters. Conrad's troublemaker turns out to be a lonely lad dealing with an absentee father. Connie Stevens' Gail is actually a high school student named Jane, whose identity crisis almost leads to a bad situation. Still, Palm Springs Weekend has no illusions of being taken seriously, not even to the point of Gidget or Where the Boys Are (both of which dealt fleetingly with more mature themes).

Jerry Van Dyke and Zeme North, whose
career fizzled in the late 1960s.

Interestingly, about half the Palm Springs Weekend cast was appearing in Warner Bros. TV series concurrently and the other half were set to launch long-running TV careers. Ty Hardin was starring in the Western Bronco, a spinoff of Cheyenne that was created when Clint Walker had a contract dispute with Warners. Robert Conrad and Connie Stevens both appeared in the exotic detective series Hawaiian Eye (Conrad later starred in Wild, Wild West). Troy appeared in the Miami-set private eye series Surfside 6. Stefanie Powers would become The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. before the decade ended and Billy Mumy would gain fame as Will Robinson in Lost in Space. Jerry Van Dyke appeared in many sitcoms, the most unususal being My Mother the Car, in which his deceased mother was reincarnated as a 1928 antique auto voiced by Ann Sothern. Decades later, he'd have greater success as a supporting player on the sitcom Coach.

The bottom line is that if you like these performers and enjoy the "1960s teen pic" genre, Palm Springs Weekend is a celluloid gretaway for you.

Hart to Hart: Season One

“Natalie sells tickets. I sell soap.”

This is the reason that Robert Wagner gave to ABC executives for not wanting to co-star on television with his film star wife, Natalie Wood--they simply work in two different media. Although they couldn’t get the well-known female lead of Rebel Without a Cause on board, execs persisted with Wagner, asking him what sort of television show he’d like to do. Wagner mentioned his love of detective movies, particularly the Thin Man series with William Powell and Myrna Loy, and Hart to Hart was born.

Hart to Hart (1979-1984) is a detective show which follows a happily-married entrepreneur and his wife, who are also amateur sleuths in the greater Los Angeles area and beyond. It’s insane how often mysteries and murder happened wherever they go; they are proto-Jessica Fletcher. In the first season, the most frequent line from Jonathan Hart (Wagner) is: "He's dead.” Co-star Stephanie Powers plays Jennifer Hart, whose most frequent line is a scream--she’s often being kidnapped by some fiend so that Jonathan can save her in the last act. She may as well be lashed to a railroad tie as a man in black stands nearby twirling his waxed mustache. The plots are that ancient and simplistic.

Still, the Harts look gorgeous solving problems in evening attire and jewelry, so they get a pass. The rest of the country lines up for rationed gas, but the Harts fly around in their private jet to play high stakes poker in an airplane hangar in some part of the Middle East that looks suspiciously like L.A.’s backyard. Later in this season, California also doubles for Italy! But Wagner and Powers are likable--they would have to be to get away with even half of what they are asked to do.

In season one, the best all around episode, bar none, is “Downhill to Death.” It’s a location shoot outside of L.A. for once --it’s in Vail, among lovely flurries of actual snow. The costuming is tasteful as always. Casting is great. And the script--oh, that beautiful, relatively complicated script!--contains plenty of twists so that you think you know who is doing what to whom and why, but you’re absolutely wrong.

Hart is populated with many brilliant guest stars, including those from the classic movies era. Roddy McDowall and Stella Stevens are cast as villains at a health spa in the pilot episode (written and directed by Tom Mankiewicz). Jeremy Brett plays a sinister character who is after Jennifer’s antique car. It’s also great to see newer talents. Jameson Parker--who would later play one half of the title characters in Simon & Simon (1981)--makes an appearance as a college student bent on mayhem.

The first season of Hart to Hart has its good points: decent production values, stylish costumes and an amiable cast to wear them. However, one just cannot get over the run-of-the-mill scripts. (Let’s not even mention the pervasive puns.) Perhaps the plots get better in the second season. Until then, let’s distract ourselves with something positive.

Did I mention that the people look good? They do.


Written by Java, a Cafe guest contributor, who blogs regularly at Java's Journey.

Paper Man: Is the Nonexistent Henry Norman a Murderer?

The poster reminds me of the
later film "The Wicker Man."

When a financially-strapped college student mistakenly receives a credit card in the mail, he and his friends hatch a devious plan. They will create a fictitous identify for the cardholder "Henry Norman" and charge their hearts away. They rationalize their actions by telling each other they will make the payment in full at the end of the month. However, when they receive a large monthy bill, they choose a different route. They convince computer science grad student Avery Jensen (Dean Stockwell) to hack into various databases and "create" a more robust Henry Norman, complete with Social Security number, driver's license, employment history, etc.

The deceit starts to unravel quickly. One of the students ill-advisely confides in a faculty advisor. Avery also starts having second thoughts about his role in the scam. But those troubles are nothing in comparison to the sudden death of one of the students. After being admitted to a hospital for hypoglycemia, he dies after being administered the wrong medication based on his computerized medical records. An unfortunate accident or a murder engineered by the computer-created Henry Norman?

Originally broadcast on CBS in 1971, Paper Man was made during what I consider the "Golden Age" of made-for-TV movies in the U.S. Bolstered by the success of the ABC Movie of the Week, all three major networks financed dozens of made-for-TV movies in all kinds of genres. There were comedies (The Girl Who Came Gift-Wrapped ), horror (Gargoyles), drama (Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys), Westerns (Yuma), and action films (The Birdmen). The most popular genre, though, was suspense and Paper Man was an above-average entry with an ingenius premise and a cast featuring Stockwell, James Stacy, and Stefanie Powers.

In 1971, Dean Stockwell was in the midst of a career tailspin, sandwiching Paper Man between lackluster efforts such as The Dunwich Horror and The Werewolf of Washington. He wouldn't get his once-promising career back on track until 1986 with a memorable supporting performance in David Lynch's Blue Velvet.

James Stacy had just completed a two-year run on the CBS Western series Lancer. A motorcycle accident, in which he lost an arm and a leg, stalled his career. Still, he gave an impressive performance in Kirk Douglas's political Western Posse (1975) and earned two Emmy nominations for his later work. In 1995, he was charged with child molestation and eventually served a sentence in prison.

Stefanie Powers had gained fame in 1966 as The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. She carved out a very successful career as a guest star in TV series and as the lead in made-in-TV films and occasional theatrical films. In 1979, she teamed with Robert Wagner for the hit TV series Hart to Hart. Powers has remained popular thoughout the years, touring with plays and even recording an album.

As for Paper Man, it's not an underrated gem--merely an above-average TV film with a great premise that's only partially developed. The lack of suspects certainly hurts. In the end, the only question is whether the murderer will turn out to be a "technological killer" or a human murderer. Still, the film has its fans--enough to warrant a videotape release--and, if you're feeling nostalgic about those memorable 1970s made-for-TV films, then you should definitely check out Paper Man.