PLOT: Dr. Mark Collier is a psychiatrist who specialises in hypnotism. He has just committed a murder and drives out of the house into a bollard at the front gate. A blind man happens to be passing at the time and hears the noise. He says "is anyone hurt?" but Collier doesn't reply. He doesn't reply and drives off. Collier then commits another murder, this time of his lover Nadia Donner, who was his accomplice in the first murder. He hypnotises her and tells her that when he hears him speak certain words again she will feel very hot and have an uncontrollable urge to remove her clothes and jump from her balcony into the pool below. He is holding a party at his house when Columbo shows up. He introduces Columbo to the guests and makes a short phone call to Nadia. She then plunges to her death in the pool. Columbo begins to suspect Collier had hypnotised her to do the deed but can not prove it. Therefore he concentrates on nailing him for the first murder. In the end he stages a scene. Collier is sitting down when Columbo invites a man (who looks like the blind man who Collier saw on the day of the murder) to come into the room and sit down. He does so and then Columbo explains that this man is a witness. The man says he saw Collier drive out of the victim's house on the day of the murder. Collier says this can not be. Columbo asks why not and he replies that he knows the man is blind. Columbo asks how he knows that and Collier says it was obvious by the way he entered the room. Then Collier says he will prove he is blind. He asks the man to read a page from a book, but to his surprise he does. In a panic he asks him to read another page and he does again. Collier is bamboozled. Then Columbo invites another man to enter the room. A man comes in with a guide dog. He is the other man's twin brother. Columbo explains that it was this man who had heard Collier on the day of the murder. He then says that the only way that Collier could have known he was blind was if he had seen him on the day of the murder coming out of the victim's house. He thinks he has him for the murder.
VERDICT: This episode is one where Columbo's interpretation of proof is somewhat misguided. He made the deduction that because Collier thought the man was blind that he must have seen him on the day of the murder coming out of the victim's house. In a court of law this wouldn't stand up. What if Collier had seen him in town on some other occasion with his white stick? Also, the way the first man entered the room did look as if he was blind. Even someone who hadn't seen either man before might have thought so. This episode fails to impress.
Written by Mark Wilson
(C) Copyright Wilson/Young Enterprises 2006.
CAST:
Dr Mark Collier....George Hamilton
Nadia Donner.....Lesley Ann Warren
Karl Donner........Stephen Elliott
Dr Anita Borden.......Karen Machon
Sergeant Kramer........Bruce Kirby
Dr Hunt.........William Wintersole
Charles Whelan......Ryan MacDonald
Daniel Morris.........Jack Manning
David Morris...........Fred Draper
