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The Columbo thread


Your_Lion
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Me and Turbine Freight decided there needed to be a thread for the great crumpled detective, so that we don't end up taking over the movie thread. Welcome one and all :hi:

 

There's just one more thing...

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I absolutely loved the show. I still have a lot of them with me here on old VCR tapes. One of my favorites was the one with Ruth Gordon.

 

Try And Catch Me was a good one. You had to feel sorry for Gordon's character as she was avenging her niece's death. A murderer with whom the viewer had sympathy.

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I absolutely loved the show. I still have a lot of them with me here on old VCR tapes. One of my favorites was the one with Ruth Gordon.

 

Try And Catch Me was a good one. You had to feel sorry for Gordon's character as she was avenging her niece's death. A murderer with whom the viewer had sympathy.

 

I was thinking more of her acting ability. she had a way of delivering the funniest lines with a straight face and in the most serious manner. An example would be when they (Columbo and Ruth) were in, I believe, the vault. Columbo was trying to figure out what the deceased was trying to tell them (I forget what it was he did as he was dying in the way of leaving a last message.) Anyway, Ruth Gordon says that he was probably trying to call attention to his new shoes because he had always been such a vain young man.

 

It doesn't sound funny in the retelling, I know, but on film and the way she delivers her lines .. I found amusing.

 

I liked the original Columbos better than when the show made a return after having been off the air for a few years.

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I too favour the originals on the whole, but some of the best ever Columbo episodes were the newer ones, for example Murder, Smoke & Shadows & of course the outstanding Columbo Goes To College.

 

I haven't watched them in over twenty years, and I don't know them by episode names, only by the actors who appeared in them.

 

Maybe someday I will get what Babycat has so I can watch them on my computer.

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Lorraine, if you log on to veetle.com, click on the entertainment tab & scroll down you'll find the Columbo channel. You can watch them for free on there. The guy who streams the channel mixes up the episodes at regular intervals.

 

Right now the episode Columbo Likes The Nightlife is airing. It was the last ever episode.

Edited by Turbine Freight
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Love the series. Only episodes that stand out in my memory are the Spielberg one and the one the one with Johnny Cash.

 

And its "one more question"

That's a coincidence. I watched the Johnny Cash one last night. Swan Song. For me, what stands out about this one, just like with Donald Pleasence in Any Old Port in the Storm, is that Columbo and the killer really start to like each other...which is rare. At the end, Cash is relieved that he's been caught, and Columbo genuinely seems to feel sympathy for him.

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Lorraine, if you log on to veetle.com, click on the entertainment tab & scroll down you'll find the Columbo channel. You can watch them for free on there. The guy who streams the channel mixes up the episodes at regular intervals.

 

Right now the episode Columbo Likes The Nightlife is airing. It was the last ever episode.

 

Turbine, thanks, but that doesn't help the Dial-up Diva. :)

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Just watched Prescription Murder. Great episode. It is the pilot for the show. Columbo is a lot more hard-faced in this one. I like him more like this. Gene Barry is a good baddie too. Well worth watching if you've never seen it before.

They did a recent stage play version of that one, with Dirk Benedict (Battlestar Galactica, A-Team) in the title role. Yeah, it doesn't sound like he'd work...but he actually looked surprisingly Falkish in the role.

 

http://www.liveforfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/drawn7.jpg http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_JuBNAlYJK24/TA-Bkz2tyjI/AAAAAAAAAOE/Nd2qE-cZcl0/s1600/Columbo%26Flemming1lg.jpg

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Watched one of the later episodes, Murder, Smoke & Shadows which is excellent. Fisher Stevens' portrayal of the murderer is great. He makes the character completely unsympathetic. A super episode.

That's one of the first ones I remember watching, as a little kid.

It was either that one or Double Exposure, with Robert Culp...I can't remember which way round, but those two were definitely the first ones that I saw.

I was already familiar with Peter Falk as the Grandpa in The Princess Bride, so it was fun watching him solve murders.

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Watched Troubled Waters with Robert Vaughan as the baddie. I like this one as Columbo is out of his usual environment. He's on a cruise ship & therefore has to solve the case with no aid from colleagues, forensics etc.

That's a good one. Plus it's got Patrick Macnee and Dean Stockwell in minor roles, and I like both those guys.

 

I watched Identity Crisis last night, the 2nd episode with Patrick McGoohan as the killer. Although, whenever I see Leslie Nielsen in anything, I keep expecting funny stuff to happen around him, so watching Number Six clobber him to death is always quite a shock.

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McGoohan is always a good baddie in Columbo. I know what you mean about Neilsen, when he plays the love interest in Lady In Waiting it's the same thing. You expect him to crack a joke. He turns in good performances in both Columbos.

 

I always like watching Dean Stockwell in Columbo. My favourite of his roles is when he plays the young playboy football team owner in The Most Crucial Game. Macnee is great as the cruise ship captain in Troubled Waters too.

 

These movies all have great supporting casts too. It often gets overlooked.

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One supporting cast member who I thought was underused was Vincent Price in Lovely but Lethal....obviously he was great...but how awesome would it have been for Vincent Price to play the killer. I'd love to see that episode!
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