PLOT:
Elliott Blake is a man with the gift of extra sensory perception, or so he'd like people to believe. He is head of an institute into ESP. He takes a test, which is authorised by the government in assisting intelligence services. Although virtually no people ever pass the test, anyone who does is of extreme value. Blake takes the test and passes. Everyone is amazed and delighted. However, Blake has bribed the person who was in charge of the test, a magician called Max Dyson. He and Max had been imprisoned together abroad years earlier when Max had betrayed him. Then Blake visits Max at his workroom. Blake pulls out a gun and intends to kill Max, but then he sees a better way. Max shows Blake the guillotine, which if placed one way round goes all the way down and does not cut through the item placed in it and the other way round slices it to pieces. Blake persuades Max to sit in the guillotine and chops his head off. Then he leaves Max's apartment by the lift and cleverly uses a piece of string to close the door of the apartment to make it look as if Max was alone when the 'accident' occurred. When Columbo arrives he begins digging around into the victim's circumstances, and is surprised to learn of the extraordinary happening of the day before, which Max had certified. Columbo always believes things happen for a reason and he soon begins to suspect Blake. Columbo then begins to unravel all of Blake's trickery. He sees how Blake could have left the apartment and made it seem like he hadn't been there. He also spends a lot of time at the Institute trying to find out how Blake and Max could have faked the test. He finds that during the test three independent people put a blindfold on. They then picked out a page from a map book at random and made a mark with a red pen on the page. They then drove to the sight of the pen mark and took a photo. Blake had to draw what the men were looking at by reading their minds. Columbo finds out how Max managed to do the trick. He gave the three men map books with the same page duplicated throughout the book and a pen mark already made on each page. The pens he gave the men didn't work. Therefore when the men removed their blindfolds it looked as if they had just made the mark. Columbo invites Blake to come and watch him take the test, as he Columbo says he thinks he too has the gift of ESP. Blake goes along and watches as Columbo passes the test. No one can believe it, until Columbo explains how he did it. He has also found evidence that Blake and Max were both imprisoned in the same country. However, he still has not got enough hard evidence. He invites Blake over to Max's workroom. By now Blake knows Columbo has a lot on him. Columbo becomes fascinated with the guillotine and volunteers to have a go. He tells Blake to make sure he puts it the correct way up. He fastens it down and then taunts Blake saying he knows he did it, etc. Then Blake lets loose the guillotine and it falls and Columbo is alive. Blake is amazed as he had put the guillotine the danger side up. Columbo unlocks the guillotine and reveals that he changed the labels on the guillotine. Columbo has all the evidence he needs.
VERDICT: This is a really good episode, one of the best of the later Columbos. Englishman Anthony Andrews is a great murderer. He is cool, calm and calculated. The plot is good also, and the conclusion is logical. You could argue that Columbo was taking a big risk in banking on Blake trying to kill him. However, we don't actually know that Columbo hadn't substituted a safe-safe head clamp for the existing one. And even if he did just swap the labels over, he had backed Blake into a corner and he had little choice but to try and do away with Columbo. Blake is one of the few murderers who tried to kill Columbo, along with Beth Chadwick in Lady in Waiting, Paul Gerard in Murder in Glass, Vivian Dmitri in Rest in Peace Mrs. Columbo and Fielding Chase in Butterfly in shades of grey.
Written by Mark Wilson
(C) Copyright Wilson/Young Enterprises 2006.
CAST:
Elliott Blake......Anthony Andrews
Max Dyson............Anthony Zerbe
Dr. Paula Hall........Karen Austin
Mr. Harrow..............Alan Fudge
Bert Spindler.........James Greene
Tommy...............Michael Bacall
Dori.................Dana Andersen
Sergeant Russo.....Robert Costanzo
