Columbo Mystery Movie Collection – 1989 (DVD-Video)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C Film: C+
After a
stunning success with the debut of Columbo
in 1968, Universal Television picked up the character and turned it into a hit
series. With Peter Falk as the
now-famous lieutenant, it was a huge hit part of the NBC Mystery Movie from
1971 – 1978. It remains one of the
greatest runs of a detective show in TV history and the fact that they were all
full length TV movies were all the more amazing. That Falk had an amazing feature film career
going on at the same time is phenomenal.
A decade later, Universal and Falk decided to revive the character and
once again, they had a hit.
Unfortunately,
the five telefilms that comprise Columbo
Mystery Movie Collection – 1989 were then and still are not now a match for
the original shows. Gone are the talents
that made the first series a classic.
The new names tried to make the shows work, but they were too talky and
not always as well thought out. However,
they had Falk and network TV was so awful by then that they looked good to
enough people at the time to get an audience to tune in. A new series of telefilms resulted, running
all the way to 2003, though in later years, they were less frequent. Rumors are that Falk wanted to do a final
telefilm, but Universal supposedly is not interested. I hope it is not because of these, which only
diehard fans will want to see. This
arrives long after all the original shows arrived and with no extras
whatsoever. Start with them first before
you consider this set.
The 1.33
X 1 image is not bad for its age, but the various Directors of Photography created
a show with less visual suspense and more visual noise. Not that the editing was quite MTV, but these
don’t look that much better than a typical Murder,
She Wrote show. The Dolby Digital
2.0 Mono is somewhat aged, and even surprising since some TV shows had gone
stereo by that point. The only extra here
is the nicely done America’s Top Sleuths
program from Universal’s Sleuth channel that just appeared on the second Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew DVD set. Since they have different audiences, the
repeat is forgivable.
- Nicholas Sheffo
