Columbo: Murder in Malibu

Except for Peter Falk, who is as good as ever in his Columbo role, all the other cast members fail to play their role convincingly. It was like watching a bad soap. Maybe the director of this episode, Walter Grauman,is partly to blame for that ?

Weak plot, lots of continuity mistakes, lots of camera shadows on people, stretched-out phone ringing, car following and walking scenes that hampers the flow and reveal a thin scenario. This episode could have lasted at most an hour, instead of stretching it to an hour and a half.

Also, the attempt at moving away from the usual Columbo recipe by not showing how the murder took place is only confusing and not helping the story telling.

All in all, one of the very few very bad Columbo episodes, fortunately.

Famous authoress Teresa Goren finally wakes up to the truth that her young lover Wayne Jennings is not so much in love with her as he is in love with her money. She tells him the wedding is off and that he'll never get a penny of her assets; this doesn't exactly please Jennings so, before Goren can tell anyone of her decision, he kills her and covers his trail, making it look like a robbery gone wrong in her house. Columbo joins the investigation and notes that the robber was able to cleanly break into the safe but still smashed glass to get through a very basic wooden door. Naturally he suspects Jennings but, with the evidence seemingly clearing him, he turns to him for help.

It may say more about me than anything else but there must be something wrong with a film where the main thing that gets my heart going is the sight of a cherry picker being used without any harnesses being worn and sadly that is the most memorable moment in this film. The plot is pretty much to formula so in theory it should have been OK, which as a fan I suppose it is but the problem is with the delivery of the story. The case is reasonably interesting but it doesn't develop that well and it does involve Columbo knowing an uncomfortable amount about woman's underwear. However the plots have never been the strongest in Columbo and it is usually the formula that carries the film – a formula that we all know but one that involves strong performances from the leads, something that is lacking here.

It isn't Falk's fault because he does his usual stuff pretty well and will please fans with a character that has given him the career that he has. No, the problem is with pretty much everybody else. Stevens is hardly of the standard of suspect that we have come to expect and he doesn't work with Falk at all well. He is bland and dull in a formula that calls for presence, chemistry or at least energy; true to script gave him a soft character but he still has to carry some of the blame. Likewise Vaccaro, Levine, Walters and others all barely do the minimum required of them and nobody really helped Falk do a job that, on this occasion, he couldn't do by himself.

Overall this is an OK Columbo because in essence the formula is in place but really it is done without any great skill or effort. The story is poorly developed and didn't engage me and, with such roundly uninspiring performances, this problem was laid bare and was not one that the film could recover from. Fans might just get something from it but there are many, many better Columbo films out there.

In Brenda Vaccaro's first scene her face is narrow and she looks slim, basically like she did in Midnight Cowboy. In the rest of her scenes her face is noticeably fuller and her body is heavy set. There must have been a break in the filming of this episode. She looks totally different for all her scenes after the first scene. I like seeing her because she is such a good actress, much better than Andrew Stevens who overacting this whole episode, but Brenda look changed very noticeably after her first scene. Always great to see Janet Margolin in any of her roles. She didn't get enough parts IMHO. Also, where is Columbo's beat up Volvo sedan? They should have had shot of it next to the red Jaguar two seat sports car that Stevens character drove around in.

The movie follows the usual Columbo formula but yet it isn't as good and enjoyable to watch as most other Columbo movies. You could blame the script for this, which doesn't feature a good plot or premise, nice original settings or likable characters. The movie also has some real horrible and lame dialog at times, which of course makes it all the worse.

It's not a totally horrible movie though and for a detective crime thriller made for TV it simply is good enough and features all of the right required ingredients. Of course also the presence of the Columbo character makes a good watch.

Peter Falk is in his good old form as Lt. Columbo but the rest of the cast however isn't halve as good. Andrew Stevens is an horrible B-actor who now days earns his living from making straight-to-video, also as a producer, director, writer and production designer. It says something about how his career declined, after he in 1979 still received a Golden Globe nomination for best new male star.

It's not a movie that moves along really pleasantly. It has a sort of dragging pace but this is also mostly due to the movie its script I would say and not necessary the movie it's directing style or editing. Some movies just have a dragging script. The movie also does some attempts at humor but it doesn't always work out as well as it did for other Columbo movies.

The movie does feature some nice twists however, which makes the movie different from most other Columbo movie entries. It helps to still make this movie a good watch, despite of all of its other weaknesses.

6/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

This is the lowest score I've ever given to a Columbo episode. Andrew Stevens may be about as bad an actor as exists. If he hadn't been arrested for murder, they should have arrested him for that. The plot is stupid to start with. The guy is handsome, but the drool level all over must have required a cleaning company after women met him. Anyway, he thinks he is being exposed, so he kills his potential fiancee. He has no heart, probably a sociopath. The woman's sister, played by the overrated Brenda Vicarro, is also awful actress. The times it is played for laughs just don't work well. The final scene as they are combing through women's underwear is just stupid.