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Classic US TV
'Police Woman'
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<blockquote data-quote="Snarky Oracle!" data-source="post: 119281" data-attributes="member: 57984"><p><strong>'Screams'</strong></p><p></p><p>Comic and bad celebrity impressionist Rich Little saves Afton Cooper from a pair of roadside rascals after her vehicle breaks down, only to kill her himself after recording her voice and pleads for mercy. Sergeant Crowley picks up Catherine Bach from a city sidewalk as she's thumbing for a ride to Hazzard County, frightening her as he tries to sternly warn her that she shouldn't be soliciting free rides from strangers because two teen girls are missing who were last seen at the street corner she was on. Pepper then brilliantly informs him that "you can't pick up hitchhikers!"</p><p></p><p>Several more girls are assaulted and killed the same way, but one of them managed to toss the maniac's tape recorder into the nearest lake as she fell to her death from his moving Lincoln Mark V, back when full-sized cars were the size of land yachts. The salvaged tapes are drenched but reveals Rich Little's voice, and we're hoping it's not his worst Edith Bunker impersonation; the tire tracks reveal the likely make of his luxury vehicle. But there's a twist: he has a twin brother and they've both got the same make of Lincoln. The cops ponder which sibling might be the guilty party, as if they're no closer to catching him now.</p><p></p><p>Investigating at his place of business, Pepper sees the likely car in question in the company parking lot, gets down on her knees to locate a ripped piece of fabric belonging to one of his victims (or it might be a pipe used to push exhaust fumes into the car to subdue the girls, I'm really not sure) and all you can think is: "<em>oh, Angie, those white slacks of yours are going right into the washer with a quart of bleach...</em>" The shift-ending horn blows for all the employees to leave the factory, Pepper strolls back through the plant's giant boiler room, she's stunned when one of the damning audiotapes begin blaring from the intercom system, and then the mustachioed psycho jumps down upon her from a steel beam, instigating one of those frenetic fight scenes in which Angie's stunt double appears to be wearing a Marilyn Monroe wig the prop department picked up in Spencer's Gifts at The Grove.</p><p></p><p>Crowley and the plant's security guard show up just in time to guarantee Pepper doesn't work up a sweat defending herself, and the duo later share an ice cream cone and comment on the nearest teenaged lovely getting into a big car which might wind up being her coffin.</p><p></p><p>Written and directed of course by David Moessinger who does "dark" and "dumb" simultaneously.</p><p></p><p>____________</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>"The Buttercup Killer"</strong></p><p></p><p>An unusually stylized episode for this point in the series' run -- one directed by Michael Mann in order to prove his cinematic skills to NBC to secure a network series job he's after (Mann would later jokingly assert that "Angie Dickinson taught me everything I know") -- a homicidal nun limps from one murder to another like an injured Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, photographed in blurry fisheye lens (which, in this case, is not due to a bad DVD print -- in fact, this copy is actually pretty good) shooting members of the same Greek family, one by one, and leaving a tiny yellow anemone behind. Pepper at one point gets knocked over the head by the assailant with a bad habit, and in the concluding hospital scene in which the killer's identity is revealed, the girl who almost becomes the final victim bleats some final line about his motive which, even after 41 years, I still can't quite make out. Something happened in The Old Country the killer was still vengeful about, I'm sure of it.</p><p></p><p>Even the great Jo Van Fleet pops up.</p><p></p><p>Obviously, one of the more unique, and better, episodes of the season, even though people don't seem to like it much because it's too different.</p><p></p><p>An original, appropriately eastern European score by Gerald Fried.</p><p></p><p><img src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/97/7d/f0/977df04ca005ea2a59461db2fceb337f.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]9bCWb0Yii5c[/MEDIA]</p><p></p><p>_____________</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>"Merry Christmas Waldo"</strong> (with no comma)</p><p></p><p>Lloyd Nolan is hitting banks dressed as Santa Claus, and delivering money and gifts to the poor as the squad tries to catch him and make Scrooge jokes at Sergeant Crowley's expense.</p><p></p><p>A benign, sweet-natured little Christmas episode, and one of the year's less offensive installments.</p><p></p><p>There's an original score from Morton Stevens.</p><p></p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]62kU3DOZ4CE:3[/MEDIA]</p><p></p><p></p><p><img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/3b/af/e5/3bafe5edca4eea0d718ee494cedb3fa4.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>_____________</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>"Death Game"</strong></p><p></p><p>It's hot and the air conditioning keeps going out in the police station. A street thug threatens Pepper while she and her co-workers drag him into a prison cell, making her wonder why the guys always seem to take their rage out on women, if there's one around. Then, frustrated that their latest drug bust (Nehemiah Persoff) has already made bail before they can finish their drinks at Vinnie's, Pepper leaves the bar and almost gets run over in the parking lot, but, being a good cop, she just goes home and doesn't tell anybody about it until later. When she finally does, Bill is rightly pissed, and Pepper reacts with a defensive shrillness which seems even less professional than her waiting 12 hours to report the attempt on her life. When she almost gets blown up and shot while visiting her snitch named "Napoleon" (Danny DeVito) Crowley picks up the diminutive informant and appears to sodomize him all the way back to the station. Then the stalker gets into Pepper's apartment, wakes her up, she knocks the knife from his hands, dives for the .38 police special inside her nightstand, fires away as he slips out thru the sliding glass door in her bedroom, and you know it's all done in a very convincing manner. Heh. Even under protective custody, her car blows up with a talcum powder bomb. Eventually re-arresting Persoff and assuming he's the faceless villain, Pepper takes a few days off at Crowley's recommendation and spends the weekend at a friend's mountain cabin with no phone. Big surprise -- the real crook follows her there and tries to shoot her in the woods, only he's Richard Schaal, seemingly too young (let alone recognizable at that time) for the mysterious culprit part he's playing: an elderly A/C repairman embittered that seductive Pepper once arrested his son for rape, that son recently beaten to death in prison. Back at the cabin, Pepper has a drink with the boys, suggests they all thank the good-looking park ranger who saved her in their own special and individual ways, and she then makes a funny Freudian voice which Crowley criticizes and the episode ends.</p><p></p><p>It's okay, this one, but there's no question -- in keeping with the entire Season 4 as a whole -- that we've drifted into Late-'70s Series TV Territory where nearly every show feels like it's being produced by Aaron Spelling even when it's not.</p><p></p><p>An acceptable original score from Bruce Broughton, but it's tracked <em>waaaay</em> too much throughout this season.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Snarky Oracle!, post: 119281, member: 57984"] [B]'Screams'[/B] Comic and bad celebrity impressionist Rich Little saves Afton Cooper from a pair of roadside rascals after her vehicle breaks down, only to kill her himself after recording her voice and pleads for mercy. Sergeant Crowley picks up Catherine Bach from a city sidewalk as she's thumbing for a ride to Hazzard County, frightening her as he tries to sternly warn her that she shouldn't be soliciting free rides from strangers because two teen girls are missing who were last seen at the street corner she was on. Pepper then brilliantly informs him that "you can't pick up hitchhikers!" Several more girls are assaulted and killed the same way, but one of them managed to toss the maniac's tape recorder into the nearest lake as she fell to her death from his moving Lincoln Mark V, back when full-sized cars were the size of land yachts. The salvaged tapes are drenched but reveals Rich Little's voice, and we're hoping it's not his worst Edith Bunker impersonation; the tire tracks reveal the likely make of his luxury vehicle. But there's a twist: he has a twin brother and they've both got the same make of Lincoln. The cops ponder which sibling might be the guilty party, as if they're no closer to catching him now. Investigating at his place of business, Pepper sees the likely car in question in the company parking lot, gets down on her knees to locate a ripped piece of fabric belonging to one of his victims (or it might be a pipe used to push exhaust fumes into the car to subdue the girls, I'm really not sure) and all you can think is: "[I]oh, Angie, those white slacks of yours are going right into the washer with a quart of bleach...[/I]" The shift-ending horn blows for all the employees to leave the factory, Pepper strolls back through the plant's giant boiler room, she's stunned when one of the damning audiotapes begin blaring from the intercom system, and then the mustachioed psycho jumps down upon her from a steel beam, instigating one of those frenetic fight scenes in which Angie's stunt double appears to be wearing a Marilyn Monroe wig the prop department picked up in Spencer's Gifts at The Grove. Crowley and the plant's security guard show up just in time to guarantee Pepper doesn't work up a sweat defending herself, and the duo later share an ice cream cone and comment on the nearest teenaged lovely getting into a big car which might wind up being her coffin. Written and directed of course by David Moessinger who does "dark" and "dumb" simultaneously. ____________ [B]"The Buttercup Killer"[/B] An unusually stylized episode for this point in the series' run -- one directed by Michael Mann in order to prove his cinematic skills to NBC to secure a network series job he's after (Mann would later jokingly assert that "Angie Dickinson taught me everything I know") -- a homicidal nun limps from one murder to another like an injured Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, photographed in blurry fisheye lens (which, in this case, is not due to a bad DVD print -- in fact, this copy is actually pretty good) shooting members of the same Greek family, one by one, and leaving a tiny yellow anemone behind. Pepper at one point gets knocked over the head by the assailant with a bad habit, and in the concluding hospital scene in which the killer's identity is revealed, the girl who almost becomes the final victim bleats some final line about his motive which, even after 41 years, I still can't quite make out. Something happened in The Old Country the killer was still vengeful about, I'm sure of it. Even the great Jo Van Fleet pops up. Obviously, one of the more unique, and better, episodes of the season, even though people don't seem to like it much because it's too different. An original, appropriately eastern European score by Gerald Fried. [IMG]https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/97/7d/f0/977df04ca005ea2a59461db2fceb337f.jpg[/IMG] [MEDIA=youtube]9bCWb0Yii5c[/MEDIA] _____________ [B]"Merry Christmas Waldo"[/B] (with no comma) Lloyd Nolan is hitting banks dressed as Santa Claus, and delivering money and gifts to the poor as the squad tries to catch him and make Scrooge jokes at Sergeant Crowley's expense. A benign, sweet-natured little Christmas episode, and one of the year's less offensive installments. There's an original score from Morton Stevens. [MEDIA=youtube]62kU3DOZ4CE:3[/MEDIA] [IMG]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/3b/af/e5/3bafe5edca4eea0d718ee494cedb3fa4.jpg[/IMG] _____________ [B]"Death Game"[/B] It's hot and the air conditioning keeps going out in the police station. A street thug threatens Pepper while she and her co-workers drag him into a prison cell, making her wonder why the guys always seem to take their rage out on women, if there's one around. Then, frustrated that their latest drug bust (Nehemiah Persoff) has already made bail before they can finish their drinks at Vinnie's, Pepper leaves the bar and almost gets run over in the parking lot, but, being a good cop, she just goes home and doesn't tell anybody about it until later. When she finally does, Bill is rightly pissed, and Pepper reacts with a defensive shrillness which seems even less professional than her waiting 12 hours to report the attempt on her life. When she almost gets blown up and shot while visiting her snitch named "Napoleon" (Danny DeVito) Crowley picks up the diminutive informant and appears to sodomize him all the way back to the station. Then the stalker gets into Pepper's apartment, wakes her up, she knocks the knife from his hands, dives for the .38 police special inside her nightstand, fires away as he slips out thru the sliding glass door in her bedroom, and you know it's all done in a very convincing manner. Heh. Even under protective custody, her car blows up with a talcum powder bomb. Eventually re-arresting Persoff and assuming he's the faceless villain, Pepper takes a few days off at Crowley's recommendation and spends the weekend at a friend's mountain cabin with no phone. Big surprise -- the real crook follows her there and tries to shoot her in the woods, only he's Richard Schaal, seemingly too young (let alone recognizable at that time) for the mysterious culprit part he's playing: an elderly A/C repairman embittered that seductive Pepper once arrested his son for rape, that son recently beaten to death in prison. Back at the cabin, Pepper has a drink with the boys, suggests they all thank the good-looking park ranger who saved her in their own special and individual ways, and she then makes a funny Freudian voice which Crowley criticizes and the episode ends. It's okay, this one, but there's no question -- in keeping with the entire Season 4 as a whole -- that we've drifted into Late-'70s Series TV Territory where nearly every show feels like it's being produced by Aaron Spelling even when it's not. An acceptable original score from Bruce Broughton, but it's tracked [I]waaaay[/I] too much throughout this season. [/QUOTE]
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'Police Woman'
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