Hounds of Hell

If you are going to murder someone, you do it simply and with high certainty. After all, complicated and bizarre schemes might be entertaining in TV shows, real life killings are far more mundane...and believable. So, if you're looking for believability, this is an episode to skip!

Someone has it out for some of his fellow soldiers who served with him in Vietnam. Who this is, no one knows. But instead of a bullet to the head, he uses a method which could EASILY be avoided...he trains dogs to kill. Sure, such an attack would be pretty cool, but even a big dog like the Doberman in this one is NOT certain to be able to kill someone. Perhaps having a pack of dogs would have made more sense. All I know is that so much of what follows also makes no sense and the episode just seemed sloppy, clichéd and heavily in need of a re- write. A few of the other sloppy elements were the guy who got blown up by a grenade....who actually LOOKED amazingly undamaged despite a close encounter with the weapon and it SHOULD have blown him to pieces as well as a guy with a snub-nosed revolver taking out a guy shooting back with a rifle and scope (only in TV would such a thing normally occur).

Number One: the acting is excellent. Number Two: good script, but extremely violent.

Dobermans were featured in quite a few dramas at the time. There was an incredibly violent episode of COLUMBO where a victim was mauled to death in his house, also some tv movies about Dobermans, either as guard dogs or trained to steal.

This episode begins where a man is hunting in a remote area and attacked and killed by a Doberman. Not for the squeamish, and the camera cuts to his thermos spilling all his coffee instead of blood. Jack Turley wrote this story, at the time writing for the FBI tv series.

The dog attacks tie into a tale of revenge with a war vet angle. Mannix had a lot of these encounters, either Joe or one of his clients were the subject of some maniac trying to even the score, due to a past incident on the battlefield in Korea. Jack Turley probably ran with the idea for his story. In this case, members of a Vietnam combat unit are being killed, blamed for their commander being paralyzed in a botched attack.

Geoffrey Duel (who resembled his late actor brother) plays the care giver for his wheelchair bound brother (Jim McMullan), also one of the suspects. Duel was a very good actor and fits perfectly in this cat and mouse game. Also look for Ford Rainey as a grizzled rancher who bumps heads with Cannon (and has snarling dogs). Rainey bounced back and forth between this show and Mannix, usually playing someone's dad or grandpa. McMullan is best known for playing Senator Dowling on DALLAS.

Lot of emotions at play here, and you really feel sorry for the victim. There's a clever bit where McMullan taps out codes to Cannon; he's unable to talk, which is not all that fictional. Light shed on the thousands of Vietnam vets (in the early 70s as the war was nearing an end) who dealt with similar traumatic injuries.

10 Stars.

Yes, I agree with the last reviewer. I also thought McMullan was NOT paralyzed and playing some sort of a game. But he is very much wheelchair bound. That would have made an incredible bait and switch.

One to see, but more graphic than the past two mystery episodes. SEASON 3 EPISODE 4 remastered CBS/Paramount dvd box set. 6 dvd box series/ 20 hrs 2012. The dvds are colored in blue.