Another movie worth seeking out – featured the dynamite combo of Falk and Alan Arkin.
In preparation for his daughter’s wedding, dentist Sheldon Kornpett meets Vince Ricardo, the groom’s father. Vince, a manic fellow who claims to be a government agent, then proceeds to drag Sheldon into a series of chases and misadventures from New York to Central America.
It has hilarious dialogue that supplied me and my husband with one-liners to lob at each other throughout our whole marriage. “Serpentine! Serpentine!”
Bit of trivia from IMDB:
In the 2003 DVD commentary, Alan Arkin relates that Marlon Brando once told him he had seen this film 20 times and even imitated Arkin’s delivery of certain lines from the film. Writer Andrew Bergman concurs that Brando’s appreciation of his script was integral to getting Brando to star in The Freshman (1990).
I’m curious if your run began with “Ransom for a Dead Man” or “Prescription: Murder.” The latter was the “original” pilot, predating the former by 3 years, and while still played by Peter Falk, Columbo is a very different character than he was for the rest of the series.
“Prescription: Murder.” came first in line in the Tubi lineup. I hadn’t noticed how much earlier it was from the others, since it and “Ransom for a Dead Man” were listed as ep1 and ep2 of season 1.
I didn’t notice that Columbo’s character in that first ep was any different from the rest of the series-- in fact I had noticed that they set Columbo’s whole shtick in stone in that very first episode when the murdering psychiatrist says something like (paraphraisng from memory): “I see through your charade, detective. You act all absentminded and bumbling, but you know exactly what you’re doing. Even your cigar is a prop!” It seems to me right from the start the show knew exactly what it was, and never deviated.
Another Columbo fun fact I’ve mentioned in other threads: The wriitng team based the character of Columbo on the detective in Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment.
The authors noted that this was first used when they were typing a script, and noticed that they had left out a part. Rather than retyping the whole page, they added the missing section as “just one more question”.
My favorite Columbo moment is when there’s a murder victim at a garbage dump. Columbo drives up and a uniformed officer tells him that he can’t drop off his junker car that day. Columbo is offended. He says something like, “This car is a classic!”
And in another episode, he walks into a soup kitchen to ask about a suspect and a nun assumes that he’s down on his luck. She gets him food and tells him she’ll find a better coat for him. After a while, he doesn’t even try to explain.
I also like one episode where the murderer’s a member of Mensa (or the equivalent) and after Columbo catches him, he gives Columbo the Mensa entry exam, which he aces.
Not just a note, but a note on a computer! By sheer coincidence, I saw both episodes on different channels about two hours apart. I had a strong feeling of deja vu.
Love that show! For a while I had every episode of the original series on VHS, painstaking recorded from late night TV broadcasts.
My favorite episode is the one with Dick Van Dyke mentioned a few times in this thread, “Negative Reaction”. The crime seems almost foolproof, and they way Colombo catches him in the end is surprising and brilliant.
Slightly off topic and I don’t even know why I remember this, but he played a hardcore alcoholic in The Morning After . I think he won a drama Emmy for that role.
Wow, geez. I am watching Columbo for the first time, with my old man. We’re slogging through 'em, very slowly, maybe two episodes a month or less frequently. Got the whole boxed set.
Love his green cigars, the dog, the wife who may or may not exist, and the old jalopy, which I am told was actually a really beautiful model back in the day.
I am also reading the Sherlocke Holmes stories, having only read two in my school years. The two series accompany each other quite well!
I found it hard to believe that a police commissioner wouldn’t know a forensics lab can tell if a person drowned in a bathtub or a swimming pool.
Did you notice, BTW, that the episode in the '90s where Columbo nails the two college kids who murder their professor was basically a rewrite of “A Friend in Need”? He even tricked them into acting on “evidence” he planted, just like he did with the commissioner.