Ransom for a Dead Man (1971, Richard Irving) (Patreon)

46/100

Now this is a pilot (disguised as another stand-alone TV-movie, three years after Prescription: Murder), even going so far as to have its villain handily summarize Columbo's M.O.: "The humility, the seeming absent-mindedness, the homey anecdotes about the family...yeah, Lieutenant Columbo, fumbling and stumbling along, but it's always the jugular he's after." Falk has now found the character, who's introduced this time searching in vain for a lost pen; that's not part of any crafty setup, except insofar as it suggests that he routinely disarms suspects by acting absurdly inept. And Lee Grant makes a superb sociopathic killer, though I don't love the way that her absence of empathy gets implicitly equated with her professional ambition, everyone looking askance at the "lady lawyer." Better Columbo, better guest star...better movie, yes? Unfortunately, though Levinson and Link are credited with the idea, this just isn't a very good script. Leslie's crime involves little in the way of diabolical planning and execution (an element that made Prescription good fun for the half hour before Columbo even shows up); Columbo's deductions pick up on errors that a woman this smart would never actually make (and he somehow ignores what to me seemed like the most obvious one: How would these ostensible kidnappers way down on the ground be able to confirm that she flew alone to the drop spot, as they demanded? Automatically suspicious, if you ask me, doubt the cops would go along); and way too much of the snoozy plot hinges on Leslie's intensely annoying stepdaughter, whose every appearance throws things tonally out of whack with needlessly crazed intensity. Irving tosses in some cute visual fillips this time—depicting the murder abstractly, superimposing car headlights' cross-shaped lens flares onto Leslie's cold eyes after she dumps the body—and we get another remarkably interesting score, this time courtesy of Billy Goldenberg (Duel, The Last of Sheila). Had I seen this in '71, however, I would not have been panting for more of the same, and it seems as if my appreciation for the series may be largely ingenuity-dependent.