Drug-addicted porn starlets begin turning up dead across L.A. with common ties to a talent agency run by Andrea (Rita Taggart) a former porn actress.
Police Sgt. Rick Hunter (Fred Dryer) and his partner Sgt. Dee Dee McCall have little trouble figuring out what has happened but they have considerable trouble proving it. The usual difficulty dealing with a police bureaucracy and incompetence erupt.
Dee Dee baits the suspect (Leo Rossi) by going undercover as a would be porn starlet. This would be familiar ground for the series - Dee Dee going undercover as bait with Hunter lying in wait.
The term "snuff films" generally refer to a clandestine staging of a murder with a victim, usually female, engaged in a sex act beforehand. Fake ones produced in the early 1970s sprang up and created an enduring urban legend.
Starting off season two of the series with an episode delving into the world of pornography which nearly featured Hunter's attractive female partner McCall (A Lynda Carter lookalike) getting whacked in a snuff film showed the eagerness of the production team to provide provocative subject matter for fans and potential viewers.
Bruce Davison as Hunter's new Captain was a bizarre bit of casting. You can sometimes get an actor to slum it in a lower grade production by giving him a role that helps him untypecast himself. My guess would be that Bruce Davison was attempting to get out of roles which made him look milquetoast.
The rest of the casting is perfect. To me Rita Taggart always looked like a former porn actress and no one played a lascivious sleaze bucket more convincingly than Leo Rossi.
Directed by David Soul of Starsky and Hutch fame.
Episode also features Tracy Vaccaro - Playboy Playmate of the Month October 1983 and Fred Dryer's real-life wife. She would go on to appear in four episodes of the series.
