Skip to main content

Just One More Thing: Murder by the Book

A retrospective by Forrest Humphrey 

 The Detective genre can be a hard one to stand out in, but for decades, television's most beloved detective pulled it off. Peter Falk's “Columbo” managed it by changing the question any detective story asks. We aren't trying to figure out “who did it” but “how will they get caught?” You see, at the start of an episode/film, we are shown exactly who killed who and how it's done, and the real meat of the story is watching the titular detective piece together the evidence and close in on the murderer by the end. 

1971's “Murder by the Book” revolves around a pair of famous mystery writers, played by Jack Cassidy and Martin Milner. One partner, Jim, does most of the work (Milner) and the other, Ken, handles the publicity (Cassidy), and eventually, the one doing the real work decides to split up and work on his own. Furious at being cut off, Ken stages a 'perfect' murder. He invites his partner out to a lakeside cabin for a weekend relaxation, but after seeing his former friend out, he returns to the office and ransacks it. After they arrive at the cabin, he convinces Jim to call his wife and lie about still being at the office to cover for being out relaxing, and during that phone call, Ken kills Jim, his wife hearing the gunshot. She calls the cops, who search the ransacked office with Ken's plan seemingly going off without a hitch, his alibi of being miles away seemingly bulletproof.

Enter Lieutenant Columbo (Falk). With his rough coat, cheap cigars and seemingly bumbling personality, he seems utterly incompetent. However, Columbo is in fact quite a brilliant detective beneath it all, and thus the main thrust of the episode gets going: Watching Columbo interact with Ken and unraveling the alibi and finding out the truth. Falk's portrayal of the likable and brilliant detective had already proven itself in a pair of pilot films but this was the first proper episode in what would become a beloved, long running franchise. Between Falk's charming character and the twist I mentioned earlier, even a relatively simple episode like this is entertaining for the basic but fantastic twist on the old murder mystery formula. Its a game of cat and mouse where's you love watching the killer slip up and Columbo close in, and its still novel and fun today. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Forgotten Film Friday: Absolute Power

Clint Eastwood stars as Luther Whitney, a jewel thief who works in the Washington DC area. One night while he is stealing from a mansion he is forced to hide in a secret compartment with a two way mirror. From there he observes a sexual rezendevous with the wife of a powerful man and the President of the United States Alan Richmond (Gene Hackman) Suddenly the president gets aggressive and while defending herself the woman is shot to death by two Secret Service agents. Luther manages to get away with a letter opener the woman stabbed the president with. At first Luther plans to flee the country. But when he is disgusted by a statement the president makes, Luther decides to expose the crime. I miss these kind of films. The nineties was a great time for thrillers exactly like this. They are not the flashiest films but they are also not obsessed with big action scenes. It's all plot and character with them. Sure this plot might be a little out there but Eastwood makes it work. He's...
1 comment
Read more

John Candy month

 What can you say about John Candy? He was a comic genius who was taken from us too soon. There were a lot of comedic heavyweights of the eighties and nineties but Candy stood above most of them. If there is a Mount Rushmore of comedy I imagine John Candy would be on it. For the month of July we are honoring this comic genius. 
Post a Comment
Read more

Oscar bait month

 The Academy Awards. That time of the year when everyone debates what movies are truly the best and there is never a consensus and no one is ever happy. A movie can be incredibly popular and then it wins a bunch of Oscars and suddenly it's overrated and not very good or downright bad. It happens every year. But for the month of April let's take a look at those films that had Oscars on their mind and instead fell flat on their faces. Now Oscar Bait is a term that can also be applied to winners or films that did score a bunch of nominations. For example Bradley Cooper's film Maestro is very much an Oscar Bait movie even though it had a decent awards season. I want to talk about the films that did nothing. That were early contenders then either faded away eventually or just plain crashed and burned. Oscar Bait's biggest failures. What wrong here with these? Was the movie poor? Did something else just have a dominant run? Or were politics involved? Maybe all of the above. S...
Post a Comment
Read more