PLOT:
This Columbo episode is unique, because the crime committed isn't murder; it's kidnapping. Columbo's nephew and fellow police officer Andy Parma is marrying Melissa Hayes. Columbo is a guest of honour at the wedding. On the evening of the wedding Andy is taking a shower in their hotel room when Melissa disappears. Andy sees Columbo, who is staying in the hotel, and they begin to search for clues as to where she is. They find a shoe on the stairwell. Columbo interviews a cleaner called Bill Bailey who works next to the hotel, who claims he saw a van back into the yard. They are the only leads. Melissa's mother is not in the best of health and her husband pleads with Columbo to keep the kidnapping secret as long as possible. Melissa, meanwhile, has been locked in a room by the mentally disturbed kidnapper. He intends to marry her the following day and then intends to kill her immediately afterwards. His father murdered his mother and he has gone mental because of it. He has all Melissa's modelling photos and is obsessed with her. Columbo and Andy search the guest list for the wedding and begin to eliminate people. They visit the photographer around 2am, who lets them have the photos of the wedding. They match names on the guest list with people on the photo. In a few hours they have identified most of the wedding guests. They then identify the few remaining guest except one person. There is a photo of this person, but no one has a clue who he is. Having worked through the night, Columbo visits the photographer, who is visiting Eileen Hacker (Juliet Mills), who is organising the photos for a magazine article. Columbo then finds another photo of the unknown man. He borrows it and blows it up at the police station. The man is wearing a ring. It is the ring of a local college. Columbo, Andy and a few police detectives, pay a visit to the college and ask to see their yearbooks. They spend hours looking through the yearbooks to see if they can identify the man. Finally they think they have identified him. His name is Rudi Strassa. Then they go to the local auto dealer and get several brochures of vans. They visit Bill Bailey to see if he can identify the type of van. He doesn't think it is any of them. Then Columbo shows him a photo of an ambulance and puts a slip of paper over the ambulance sign. Bill thinks it is the van he saw. Then Columbo removes the paper to show him it is ambulance. He phones round the local hospitals and finds out that the previous day an ambulance had gone missing and an employee, Rudi Strassa, had got the sack. They then obtain Strassa's address and the police go down there. They approach the house silently and burst in through the door. Strassa is lying in the bed with Melissa with a scalpel in his hand. One of the policemen shoots Strassa dead and Melissa survives.
VERDICT: This is a very different Columbo episode because there is no murder. Its fascination revolves around Columbo and the police's way of tracking down the killer and the time they do it in. The episode builds to a tense climax as the police race against time to save Melissa. Although the acting from some of the guest stars is below par, Columbo is on form and the episode has a decent plot.
Written by Mark Wilson
(C) Copyright Wilson/Young Enterprises 2006.
CAST:
Melissa...............Joanna Going
Andy Parma..........Thomas Calabro
Rudi Strassa.......Daniel McDonald
Detective Mulrooney....Doug Savant
Sergeant Goodman........Dan Butler
Alex Varrick..........Daniel Davis
Sheldon Hays.........Donald Moffat
Eileen Hacker.........Juliet Mills
Bill Bailey.............David Byrd
Police captain.......Lance LeGault
Louise Hays........Patricia Huston
Tubby Comfort.........Cliff Emmich
