Prescription: Murder. A TV movie and a pilot. I had seen several episodes of Columbo before seeing this episode. As a matter of fact, I had never seen this episode until I bought the first season on DVD while on my honeymoon (my wife bought it for me, actually, and she had never seen the show before in her entire life).
While viewing it again for the blog, I made a realization: I have ruined this "episode" by seeing other episodes. I have the foreknowledge of who Columbo is before he enters the good psychiatrist's living room. I'm expecting it. I know what the doctor is in for.
No one who had seen the play this movie was based on would know that.
The Ultimate Columbo Site has both researched and reprinted Richard Levinson & William Link's invention of Lt. Columbo and the actor switcheroo the character underwent from television to stage play and back to television again, so I'll refer you to that site. I find it very handy. I also don't want to replicate their information here.
Despite the possibility of making this blog even more pointless after linking that other site, I'll proceed.
Prescription: Murder starts off with psychiatrist Dr. Ray Flemming (played by Gene Barry) playing some sort of snooty guessing game with guests that I can't imagine are truly that interested in playing. It's his anniversary party, which he LEAVES to go attend to a patient. I guess when you're on call, you're on call. It's the late 60's (this aired in early 1968), so maybe his guests think he's just going to pop over for a house call and prescribe some horse tranquilizers or something and head back for more boring guessing games.
Dr. Flemming heads over to a snazzy house with an outdoor inground swimming pool. In it is his patient, Joan, who is in a bikini, and who gets out of the pool and starts making out with Dr. Flemming. Oh, that kind of house call.
You can see where "prescription: murder" falls into place from here on in. Dr. Flemming's wife threatens divorce, so after lying to her about planning a trip, he kills her in their condo and then fakes a robbery by smashing their balcony glass glass and taking some of her things. Joan shows up, sees the body of his wife and is shocked, but he coaches her through changing his wife's clothes and wearing them herself as she pretends to be his wife on the way to the airport. Joan is an actress, an can use her acting skills for this. They fake a fight on the airplane before it takes off and Joan leaves the plane, establishing that Dr. Flemming's wife was alive and with him at the airport and even on the plane before leaving on her own, and thus Dr. Flemming on his way to fish while the real Mrs. Flemming's body is being discovered a day or so later.
When Dr. Flemming returns to his condo a few days later, the body of his wife is gone, the broken glass balcony door is boarded up, and in walks a short guy dressed in evening hobo wear. This man has been smoking a cigar in Dr. Flemming's own bedroom this whole time, apparently.
It's Columbo, and this is where I realize I've been missing out by never having seen this prior to the other Columbo episodes I've seen in syndication. See, this 'movie' doesn't feel like a 'pilot,' especially for one character. It's about the murderer, Dr. Flemming, more than anything else. But I'm jumping ahead.
Dr. Flemming feigns shock that there's been a violent crime in his own home, but is even more shocked to discover that his wife is still alive, in a coma. At the hospital, we share a smirk that Mrs. Flemming regains consciousness just long enough to say her husband's name before passing away. Oh, see, they were hoping she'd name the murderer, and she DID, but the police and the doctors just thought they were calling out for her husband! Dr. Flemming knew otherwise, as do we, and perhaps...nah, can Columbo figure that out as well?
To sum up the next act, Columbo basically harasses Dr. Flemming here and there, but Dr. Flemming doesn't blow his top. He does however instruct his patient/lover/accomplice Joan to stop seeing him or calling him, one of those finer points of pulling off a murder that I can't believe they didn't discuss beforehand, but by then Columbo had seen her at his office and has already sensed something about them. Dr. Flemming has also gone over Columbo's head and asked his friends in the police department to have Columbo removed from the case.
So, Columbo pays Flemming a visit at his office, requesting that Dr. Flemming analyze him as a potential patient. Which leads to this scene here:
This is pretty low key for a climactic confrontation, but it highlights what I said about missing out from not seeing this before any other Columbo episode. It's about the killer. The movie follows either Dr. Flemming or Joan. There are no scenes with Columbo where he is taking his dog to the vet or arguing with a traffic cop about the state of his terrible, terrible car. It's about Dr. Flemming and his narcissistic ego.
Don't get me wrong, this is a great scene, but no matter how clever you are, whether you've committed the act and think you're untouchable or you are in fact innocent but figure it doesn't hurt to theorize about the crime, it's probably not wise to talk about how smart the killers are and how the cops will never catch them. Because they'll probably just zero in on you some more.
And especially because it's Dr. Flemming's own wife who was murdered, you'd think he's speak a little less indifferently about the criminal's act of violence against his wife, and perhaps give far less praise to the criminal's intellect and accomplishment of getting away with murder (...literally). He might as well add that the criminal is also far too handsome in addition to being, in Dr. Flemming's mind, too smart to be caught. Dude, that's your WIFE who was killed. You're PROUDLY telling the detective that the murderer will be getting away with THE MURDER OF YOUR WIFE. And what's even worse is that he's a freakin' psychiatrist! What psychiatrist/psychologist is going to rationalize and praise ACTUAL murder? Perhaps grief counseling is not one of Dr. Flemming's specialties.
I should point out here that Dr. Flemming and his wife were wealthy, and had wealthy friends (hence the black tie party that started the movie) and Dr. Flemming had considerable influence with the police to have Columbo taken off a murder investigation. Columbo shows up lookin', and acting, like a below-average joe.
The meeting of the minds ends there and Columbo bumps into Joan who is preparing for a scene in a movie. She screws up immediately by asking why Columbo is still on the case (how did she know he had been taken off?) and then refers to Dr. Flemming by his first name. This girl was not coached very well beyond the actual murder, I think.
The focus, as I mentioned, is on the murderers, Dr. Flemming and Joan. Columbo interacts with them, but in no way is this about the investigation. It's about Dr. Flemming stoically thinking, and almost bragging, that he outsmarted Columbo, the only person who thinks Dr. Flemming responsible. It's about a man so cold and arrogant that he does himself in when he plainly tells Columbo that he'd have no problem repeating the whole process with Joan if she would be a risk to his plan.
Why he couldn't see a marriage counselor in the first place is beyond me. You'd think he'd know someone in the biz.
In my viewing for this entry, I couldn't help but compare this to the looks and attitude of Mad Men. The latter show gets the tone (clothing, smoking & drinking in the offices, dumber younger mistresses) right if this movie was an indication of life for professionals in the 60's, except guys in period pieces will always look like guys in period pieces.
This is also a pretty good movie. Columbo lays it on thick, breaking out of the bumbling character we know in later episodes (since this is the first, does it count to say "breaking?") when he confronts Joan one last time to let her know that he'll be pressuring her from now on to confess. He gets pretty angry, and you rarely ever see him angry from here on. Perhaps it also hints at the true side of Columbo, a very serious man who, as described in the scene, plays a fool to disarm his suspects.
I don't believe this episode did not well, and viewers found the detective, the antagonist yet true hero of this movie, to be unsympathetic (and in that scene with Joan, mean, impersonal, and intimidating).
When you have no characters who are sympathetic, you might stop tuning in after a few episodes.
Just a few more things:
- Again, had I not seen other Columbo episodes before seeing this one, I would never have guessed that this would be the start of one of the longest running detective series and characters in television.
- I had first learned of Columbo in a Mad Magazine reprint special. In the end, it is discovered that most of the people Columbo had put away had confessed to crimes they didn't commit just so Columbo would leave them alone. I didn't quiet get the reference and asked my dad and showed him the article. He laughed his head off and told me the premise of the show.
- No blood; Mrs. Flemming was strangled.
- Gene Barry was Dr. Clayton Forrester in the original War Of The Worlds. Dr. Clayton Forrester is also the mad scientist from Mystery Science Theater 3000, which has name dropped a few of Gene's tv shows in their skewering.
- Peter Falk's hair wouldn't look as good in future episodes as it does here. The clothes are Falk's own, by the way.
- SPOILER - When Joan hears that Dr. Flemming would have been willing to kill her to keep her quiet and she announces that she'd like to confess and (presumably) implicate Dr. Flemming, can Dr. Flemming claim that her story is just hearsay? Made up? I still don't see any more evidence beyond any testimony she might give (one of the stewardesses from the flight might be able to identify Joan as the woman at the airport), and despite any proof of an affair, it would still become a he said/she said situation. I'm just wondering.
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