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First of all, I admit this is not really a review of "Vanished". I have not seen it. But I do want to comment on the real-life episode that reportedly inspired the novel on which "Vanished" is based: About 4 weeks prior to the 1964 presidential election, Lyndon Johnson's chief-of-staff -- a 46-year-old husband and father of six named Walter Jenkins -- was arrested and charged with Disorderly Conduct following an incident in the men's bathroom of a YMCA located in Washington, DC. Jenkins had worked for LBJ since 1939 and had been his top administrative aide since 1945. It later emerged that Jenkins had been involved in a similar incident in January 1959 (while Johnson was Senate Majority Leader) but that had been covered up somehow.

In 1964, homosexuality was still such a taboo subject in American society that the media simply did not discuss the matter for about 7 days following the arrest, even though the reporters knew about it. Finally, after a week, the story "broke", even though most public discussion took place without mentioning the word "homosexuality".

Johnson's Republican opponent, Senator Goldwater of Arizona, actually knew Jenkins from their service in the Air Force Reserves and his comments were very restrained. Goldwater's VP-nominee, an obscure Congressman from Buffalo NY, was a bit less subtle, but even so the whole matter received a tiny fraction of the attention it would have received in later years. (Imagine if George W. Bush's chief-of-staff had been arrested for same-sex solicitation a month prior to the 2004 election. That would not have been simply "the lead" story in the national media, it would have been virtually THE ONLY story.)

The author Fletcher Knebel published the novel "Vanished" in 1968, about 3-4 years after the Jenkins episode, and then the TV-movie was originally aired in March 1971. So the movie was not -- as another reviewer wrote -- "filmed during the height of the Watergate scandal", which I think most people would place 2-3 years later.

(Spoliers!) Some other reviews have described this pilot episode as lasting 2-hours, but that is the syndicated version which was split into two hour-long episodes. In fact, the pilot lasts 73 minutes including closing credits.

The performances are all solid, but as someone else said, there are a few gaping plot-holes (exactly how Mrs. Elias found Nick Butler is unexplained, as is her motivation for sending him to medical school. And how did she and Jerry Grimes ever make a connection? they don't appear to have too much in common. And where exactly did Jim and Sara find that cement truck, anyway?). I would tend to chalk these unsolved-mysteries up to poor editing, as Rockford Files remains one of the best-*written* series ever. But nonetheless, they do detract from the effectiveness of the episode.

Noah Beery later made the "Rocky Rockford" role his own, but there's no need to disparage Robert Donley's performance here.

It's easy to see how Lindsay Wagner became one of the TV's biggest stars of that era -- really, she was just stunning. On the Season-One DVD, there is a bonus interview with Garner in which he expresses regret that Wagner's character wasn't included in more episodes. It seems clear that she was intended to be a recurring character, but it just never happened.

The action scenes are standard-mid-70s. When Rockford shoots a small-craft plane out of the air with a snub-nosed revolver... well, obviously that's not terribly realistic. The fight in the men's room is clever. (How strange, in 2011, to hear the good guy use the word "queer" in a disparaging way. That -- to say the very least -- would never happen today!)

The humor, the vaguely anti-establishment worldview, the LA scenery (plus some Vegas, too) -- it's all there.

I know, I know: *Another* sweet-innocent girlfriend/wife/ex-girlfriend/ex-wife/whatever is terrorized by her crazy-psychotic boyfriend/husband/ex-boyfriend/ex-husband/whatever. Yes, the concept is one we've been told about thousands of times (at least, it seems that way) before.

But I promise, out of the whole bunch, THIS ONE really is worth watching if you're into that sort of thing. I saw it when it came on TV in 1985. Had nightmares about it for months. I confess, I had forgotten who was in the cast until looking it up here on IMDb, but it's no surprise that Michael Biehn has gone on to have such a successful TV career. And who woud have thought Cloris Leachman -- one of the great comediennes -- would have a performance like this in her? Simply chilling from start to finish.

As they used to say on "Dragnet", the names were changed to protect the innocent. But this is "based on a true story" that occurred in the 1970s. The book (same title as the movie), published in 1982 by the Tucson AZ prosecutor named William Randolph Stevens, is available on amazon.

This movie should not be confused with the campier, more fictionalized sequel from 1991, starring Harry Hamlin and Joanna Kerns, and titled "Deadly Intentions... Again?" DIA is not without its own appeal, but the original is the true classic worth seeking out.