A Detective's Job Should End at Some Point

What better way to see Japan than as part of en extensive murder investigation? That's the main appeal of 1974's Castle of Sand (砂の器), a police procedural based on a book by Seicho Matsumoto. The first two thirds of the film are wonderful. Matsumoto expertly weaves extensive real world knowledge with the kind of intricate but credible plot mechanics that distinguish the best detective fiction. If only it'd ended there. Unfortunately, the final forty minutes of this two hour, twenty-two minute film are an overbaked, sentimental slog. This movie needed to quit while it was ahead.

A man is discovered murdered near a Tokyo train station. Two police detectives head the investigation--a young detective named Yoshimura (Kensaku Morita) and his elder, Detective Imanishi (Tetsuro Tamba). They don't have much to go on. A waitress had seen the victim, an older man, talking to a young man about "Kameda", a relatively common name in Japan. The only other clue is that the victim had a distinct Tohoku accent, a region in the north of the main island of Japan.

After questioning a number of local Kamedas with no luck, Imanishi hits on the idea that maybe Kameda isn't a person but a place. Checking a map, he finds that, as a matter of fact, there's a town called Kameda in Tohoku. So he heads there with Yoshimura and we get some of the film's gorgeous location shots.

This is the first step in an investigation that eventually also takes Imanishi to Osaka, Ise shrine in Mie, and Okayama. This aspect of the movie may be more interesting if, like me, you live in Japan. I enjoyed seeing the railway stations in different parts of the country and was excited when Imanishi started to get close to where I live. It doesn't look like Japan has changed much since the '70s.

The clues Imanishi follows are all satisfyingly clever, too. Unfortunately, it all leads to a climax where the detective lays out the whole history of the murderer. His boss asks what they're going to charge the culprit with and Imanishi says he'd like to explain by continuing to tell the story. And so a long, long secondary narrative unfolds about an old leper and his little boy. This part of the movie is scored with the sappiest possible violin music and features shots intended to be tear-jerkers of the kid running up to hug the leper for one last time and a gang of neighbourhood children throwing rocks at the leper. The whole time, I kept thinking, "Okay, okay, so arrest the guy already."

At the end, we're clearly meant to feel loads of sympathy for the murderer but director Yoshitaro Nomura was just smashing it too hard. It's not that I mind the idea of having sympathy for a killer but this movie piles it on so thick I just wanted it to be over. Ironically, Chishu Ryu, best known for his work with Ozu, has a small role in the film. He could've told the filmmakers a thing or two about the power of understatement.

Castle of Sand is available on The Criterion Channel.

Mike Hammer Doesn't Meet Columbo

Mickey Spillane guest starred as a victim in the 1974 Columbo episode "Publish or Perish". Like most victims on the show, he's not around for long, not like his starring role in The Girl Hunters more than a decade earlier. He didn't quit his day job as a pulp writer, which is probably for the best. He more or less comes off well playing a pulp writer on Columbo. Not writing detective stuff, as Spillane did in real life, but Vietnam war stuff.

The villains are two--a publisher (Jack Cassidy) and the explosives nut (John Chandler) he hires to kill Spillane. Chandler gives an effective, over the top performance, almost on the level of Frank Gorshin--he seems like a real maniac. He does the job for Cassidy in the hopes Cassidy will publish the book he's written on homemade bombs.

Cassidy is more of a deliciously cheesy '70s TV villain. Columbo's tactic for outsmarting him is clever and pretty satisfying for anyone who likes to analyse writing.

The Ever Culpable Robert Culp

You'd think Robert Culp would have learned not to tangle with Columbo but one year after he first played a murderer on the show he played another one in an episode appropriately called "Double Exposure". He is pretty perfect as an adversary for Columbo. He smoothly transitions from comfortably smug to bitterly exasperated.

This time he plays some kind of advertising guru who kills a client during the screening of a commercial. Columbo (Peter Falk), as usual, goes overboard in praising the prime suspect, even checking out books from the library Culp's character wrote. The two have nice chemistry.

Two other notable scenes feature a projectionist letting Columbo in on a few tricks of his trade and Columbo wandering around the supermarket. Both are nice little slices of that vanished world of 1970s America.

Columbo is available with commercials on Amazon Prime.

Substitute Pieces

For anyone who plays chess, "The Most Dangerous Match", the 1973 episode of Columbo, holds plenty of points of interest. The writers clearly had more than casual knowledge of chess and the competitive chess world, drawing together a plot about rival grandmasters that feels credible, as far as their personalities, and satisfying, in terms of the murder motive.

Laurence Harvey, father of the bounty hunter Domino, plays grandmaster Emmett Clayton who happens to have a personal connexion to his opponent, Tomlin Dudek (Jack Kruschen), having once been in a relationship with Dudek's assistant (Heidi Bruhl).

She takes delight in the idea of Dudek beating Clayton in the only thing he cares about. The two grandmasters end up having dinner together along with an impromptu game using food and cutlery. When Clayton loses, the buildup makes it very clear just how badly it cuts his pride and sense of identity. His desire to not only murder Dudek but to make the death as humiliating as possible for him makes perfect sense to any serious player who's had a losing streak.

But in that kind of chess, no grandmaster can compare with Columbo (Peter Falk). Falk's great, of course, putting the screws into Harvey and Harvey, who died that same year, is pretty good, never playing it as an over the top maniac, just as a terribly sensitive man.

Columbo is available on Amazon Prime with commercials.

Murder Most Illogical

It's Columbo verses Spock in "A Stitch in Crime", a 1973 episode of Columbo. Well, Leonard Nimoy, anyway, two years before his I am Not Spock autobiography. In 1973 he was still playing Spock in animated form but the murderous surgeon he plays here is indeed pretty far from the Vulcan science officer. It's a good episode though more for Peter Falk than Nimoy.

An especially dishevelled Columbo shows up to the crime scene with a hard boiled egg, asking if there's any coffee. He explains to suspects and witnesses throughout the episode how he hasn't had much sleep. The effect is sort of like Super Columbo, it's pretty charming, especially when he loses his temper at Nimoy who seems to outright taunt him at one point.

Anne Francis, who'd appeared in the season one episode "Short Fuse", returns as a different character, the murder victim who spots Nimoy's attempt kill another victim by using temporary suture instead of permanent suture in a heart surgery. Pretty clever, really.

Columbo is available on Amazon Prime with commercials.

Raincoat Chic

You should never underestimate the shabby lieutenant with the glass eye. That's what I've gleaned so far from watching the two pilot episodes of Columbo. The first, from 1968, is better written but has lower production values while the second, from 1971, has better production values and isn't as well written. Both were directed by Richard Irving and written by Richard Levinson and William Link, both are entertaining, the second one is slightly better.

The first one is about a psychiatrist (Gene Barry) who kills his wife for her money and the second one is about a lawyer (Leslie Williams) who kills her husband for his money. Both cases allow for striking contrast between Columbo's rumpled raincoat and the culprit's swanky digs, especially the second one, where the murderess puts her feet up in a mansion that looks vaguely like something out of a Cocteau film.

The first episode, which had its origins as a stage play from years earlier, has a more complex, well thought out plot. The psychiatrist's plan for covering up his crime, and his relationship his attractive mistress, are more complicated, though the cheapness of the penthouse set detracts a bit from verisimilitude.

For the big chunk of the episode before Columbo shows up, well over twenty minutes, it feels like fourth rate Hitchcock. Then Peter Falk walks in and things get interesting.

The cat and mouse between him and the murderer is entrancing as we watch Falk to see how much of his discomfort is feigned and how much of what he lets slip is his genuine obsession. The second pilot makes the wise decision to bring him in almost from the beginning, bumbling about the murderess' palatial porch, looking for a lost pen.

The plot here, slightly inspired by Double Indemnity (which appears briefly on a television screen) involves the inconvenient daughter of the murdered man. Columbo capitalises on the girl's suspicions in a climax that doesn't quite make sense but is amusing enough you forgive it.

Columbo is available on Amazon Prime with limited commercials via imdb.

Rocking the Ford or Fording the Rock

I frequently have a problem with to-day's short attention span quick editing on television but it's worth remembering things can go just as bad in the opposite direction. I watched the pilot episode of the 1974 detective series The Rockford Files a few days ago and, oy vey, the padding. So much padding. There's an establishing shot of a police station that was already going on too long when the camera slowly started to zoom in on the "police" sign . . . and held it there for a moment.

So this . . . is a police station. Thank you.

The plot is a bit thin and silly--surely too thin to spread over two hours--but the stars, James Garner as Rockford and Lindsay Wagner as the guest starring client/love interest, are both great and their chemistry blooms out over the loops of meaningless dialogue.

Garner had a real talent for coming off as natural in absurd circumstances and Wagner, despite her character being a pretty blandly written damsel, comes through nice and sharp and her rough voice pairs well with her pretty face.

The plot involves the murder of her homeless, alcoholic father. This happens in the beginning of the episode with a confusing shot continuity error as the camera cuts between full shots of the drunkard in baggy pinstripe slacks, stumbling towards a pier, and the red panted legs of someone following him. But then there's a cut to someone's legs wearing brown corduroy flares which I think are supposed to belong to the drunkard.

Rockford reluctantly ends up investigating despite the fact that Lindsay Wagner can't pay his normal rates. He has amusing dialogue with buddies at the hall of records and . . . the police station . . . and gradually a really confusing scheme is revealed. Somehow killing the old man helped a devious heiress and her henchman get money or cover up another crime, I'm not sure. Everyone ends up in Las Vegas and then out in the desert where Rockford manages to take down an aeroplane with a snub nose revolver.

The plane lands successfully and then explodes for some reason. But it's all nicely shot and it's preceded by a surprisingly effective car chase.

The Rockford Files is available on Amazon Prime through imdbTV, which means there are a few commercials but not very many. I think there were only four interruptions across the two part episode.

Twitter Sonnet 1327

Diversions brought the matter back to fore.
The team of strings begat the violin.
A pickled bean redeemed the seedy core.
Suspicious eyes were soothed 'neath tarpaulin.
A floating bug reported waves to suns.
Organic acres crush the wheatless chaff.
A threshing floor reports the stalks to buns.
A mild thought became a deadly gaff.
Electric streams produce the chatty fish.
A salted chip redeemed the greasy lunch.
Uncounted grains combine to make the dish.
Banana hands combine to make a bunch.
The volume sets itself throughout the night.
For ev'ry sound has got a dreamless right.

Martial Arts Assist in the Strangest Ways

The Tokyo police are stumped by a string of murders. Fortunately, Sonny Chiba, carrying a live pig, arrives from Okinawa to help out in 1977's Doberman Cop (ドーベルマン刑事). This is a fast paced, brutal, and delightfully oddball film with well edited action sequences and a surprisingly haunting story.

The victims are women, always burned to death. Joji Kano (Chiba) arrives just in time to save a fifth victim, a singer named Miki Harukaze (Janet Hatta), by swinging into her apartment through the window while she's being held hostage. The media quickly dub him "Tarzan".

Except Kano doesn't think Miki is really Miki at all but a missing woman, Yuna, from his small rural hometown. But the city police have little patience for his use of superstitious technique--like his bag of cowries he likes to consult or references to dreams and the weather. And no one wants his pig though he kindly offers it to any potential friend. "It's food!" he explains.

Finally a stripper eagerly reaches out for the animal during her act. This incident somehow culminates with her apparently having sex with a restrained Kano onstage.

Though judging from his martial arts prowess elsewhere in the film, I'm pretty sure Kano could break free if he wanted to. Chiba, of course, is a legendary martial artist but the editing helps him a lot, too. In one particularly effective shot, he leaps from the fifth or sixth floor of a building then hops on a motorcycle to chase a suspect.

This is obviously done with editing but it's done at a pace that really makes you buy it.

It turns out Miki is mixed up with a yakuza manager (Hiroki Matsukata) and it's unclear if she has the freedom to break free or even acknowledge to Kano that she's the girl he's looking for. But the cowries say Yuna is still alive so Kano doesn't quit. He fights through a series of wonderfully stylish sequences with his feet, fists, and a magnum. Doberman Cop is available on Amazon Prime.

A Tangled Ball of Motive

Everyone wanted to kill Archer Coe but it's up to Philo Vance to figure out who did. 1933's The Kennel Murder Case, based on one volume in the popular series of Philo Vance detective novels, is a vibrantly executed puzzle directed with palpable energy by Michael Curtiz and featuring a good performance by William Powell in the lead.

The dead man is discovered in his chair in his bedroom, a bullet hole in his head and a revolver in his hand, the door bolted. Naturally, this was no suicide. Only Philo seems to know at first, the rest of the authorities are happy to accept what seems obvious. Playing this story's Lestrade is Eugene Palette--his Detective Heath is as consistently wrong as he is delightful with his trademark bullfrog voice and affably irritable manner.

Mary Astor plays the dead man's niece but her role is pretty small--there's no hint of romance between her and Philo. She admits frankly she wanted her uncle dead because he controlled her inheritance; her fiance also wanted him dead for a similar reason as did her spurned lover. Also on the list of suspects is another uncle, a butler with a hidden past, and a Chinese cook (James Lee) in Coe's household who's disgusted by his employer's plan to sell his collection of Chinese artefacts.

Powell plays Philo cool and casual. This character could've easily been very boring in other hands but Powell has enough natural life in his performance to captivate the viewer. But mostly it's Curtiz that makes it work and his use of frequent cuts between shot angles in dialogue scenes. These are always organic, they never give the film a too-busy feeling and they keep things from feeling like a filmed play. The Kennel Murder Case is available on Amazon Prime.