A rather different performance from Sorrell Booke who would go on to play the loud, obnoxious Boss Hogg in The Dukes of Hazzard.
Booke plays the meek, put upon Bertie Hastings, an accountant with a high IQ. He knows his business partner Oliver Brandt (Theodore Bikel) is embezzling funds from clients to maintain a lifestyle to impress his wife. Brandt also has a high IQ.
Both belong to a society for geniuses. Brandt realises he needs to get rid of Hastings as he knows too much and will expose Brandt.
At the regular meeting of the genius society. Brandt shoots Hastings and then sets it up that an intruder shot him while Brandt was downstairs with other people.
Columbo quickly dismisses the intruder theory. The crime scene does not look right to him. Brandt looks very nervy and shifty from the get go. He had a soot marks on his face, he had an umbrella but it was not raining, there were marks on the stylus of the record player.
The set up of the murder was elaborate. There is a game of intellectual puzzles between Brandt and Columbo. This is a case where the intellectual suspect starts to fall apart rather than be aloof and arrogant. A change of pace as in other Columbo stories, the murderer strives to be intellectually superior to the detective.
I am not sure the way the murderer gave himself away worked for me.
Booke plays the meek, put upon Bertie Hastings, an accountant with a high IQ. He knows his business partner Oliver Brandt (Theodore Bikel) is embezzling funds from clients to maintain a lifestyle to impress his wife. Brandt also has a high IQ.
Both belong to a society for geniuses. Brandt realises he needs to get rid of Hastings as he knows too much and will expose Brandt.
At the regular meeting of the genius society. Brandt shoots Hastings and then sets it up that an intruder shot him while Brandt was downstairs with other people.
Columbo quickly dismisses the intruder theory. The crime scene does not look right to him. Brandt looks very nervy and shifty from the get go. He had a soot marks on his face, he had an umbrella but it was not raining, there were marks on the stylus of the record player.
The set up of the murder was elaborate. There is a game of intellectual puzzles between Brandt and Columbo. This is a case where the intellectual suspect starts to fall apart rather than be aloof and arrogant. A change of pace as in other Columbo stories, the murderer strives to be intellectually superior to the detective.
I am not sure the way the murderer gave himself away worked for me.