Nobody would accuse Johnny Cash of being a bravura actor but there is something endearing in his attempt to move his facial features, his manifold dimples, around in a plastic manner. Not that he needs to act much. He pretty much plays himself.
This episode is quite well written; the characters have some ambiguity for instance. Cash murders his wife and another young lady not because he is genuinely evil but because his gonads prompt him to do it. (He's interested in Tina, Janit Brown, a pretty girl with the calf-like eyes of a twelve-year-old child and a figure that's positively demonic in its appeal.) At the end, Cash informs Columbo that he would have confessed sooner or later anyway "because it was beginning to git to me," but neither the script nor Cash's performance has prepared us for any such thing.
The plot is intricate and fun. I don't know exactly how plausible it is. (Would you jump out of an airplane with a homemade parachute attached a homemade harness expecting to survive?) John Randolph, as an Air Force Colonel, has a small juicy part as a deaf, petty chief of an ROTC program. He growls when Columbo asks to use the phone. "That's only for official business. Suppose an alert came in." Right -- an important alert coming in for immediate action to a colonel marooned at a Community College.
The episode is missing two of the usual components of a Columbo story. There is very little vicious repartee between Columbo and the murderer. And there aren't many jokes in it at Columbo's expense. He does, though, disembark from a light plane considerably shaken.
A mature Columbo. One of the best.
This episode is quite well written; the characters have some ambiguity for instance. Cash murders his wife and another young lady not because he is genuinely evil but because his gonads prompt him to do it. (He's interested in Tina, Janit Brown, a pretty girl with the calf-like eyes of a twelve-year-old child and a figure that's positively demonic in its appeal.) At the end, Cash informs Columbo that he would have confessed sooner or later anyway "because it was beginning to git to me," but neither the script nor Cash's performance has prepared us for any such thing.
The plot is intricate and fun. I don't know exactly how plausible it is. (Would you jump out of an airplane with a homemade parachute attached a homemade harness expecting to survive?) John Randolph, as an Air Force Colonel, has a small juicy part as a deaf, petty chief of an ROTC program. He growls when Columbo asks to use the phone. "That's only for official business. Suppose an alert came in." Right -- an important alert coming in for immediate action to a colonel marooned at a Community College.
The episode is missing two of the usual components of a Columbo story. There is very little vicious repartee between Columbo and the murderer. And there aren't many jokes in it at Columbo's expense. He does, though, disembark from a light plane considerably shaken.
A mature Columbo. One of the best.