***SPOILERS**** Unusually talkative murder mystery even by Det. Columbo, Peter Falk, standers that has the clever killer make so many mistakes that it's a wonder that the great Det. Columbo didn't smoke him out, with his cheap .50 cent cigar, before the first chimerical break.
Being the #1 Detective Show, like Columbo, on TV the ego-maniacal star of the Emmy-winning "Det. Lucerne Mystery Hour" Ward Fowler aka unknown Canadian bit-part actor Charles Kipling aka Korean War US Army deserter John Schilling, William Shatner, is holding out for big bucks from the studio or else he'll take a walk for greener pastures on a rival network. Fowler has only one problem in his high expectations of himself and his future and thats his agent and co-producer of the show he's the big star in Claire Daily, Lola Albright. Claire discovered the heel back in Canada ,when he was on the lamb from the US Army for desertion during war-time, and made him over the years into a big TV star in the USA.
Fowler goes into full throttle in planning to get the pasty Claire out of his hair and his life in a staged hold-up of a delicatessen that he found out that she's going to that night to buy herself a baloney and cheese sandwich. Getting himself an air-tight alibi by having his best pal and favorite gofer Mark, Bert Remsen, watch a baseball game with him. Fowler has him knocked out with a couple of crushed Thiobarbital pills, that he slipped into his drink, and then sneaks out, with a muggers outfit, to Tony's Deli. Catching Calire at the counter and, after knocking out the terrified owner Tony(Timothy Carey), blast Claire right between the shoulder blades hitting her heart and killing her. Fowler video-taped the baseball game that he was watching with Mark and reset the time on the clock on top of the TV and Marks $1,000.00 platinum watch. When Mark woke up, after more then an hour, it looked like he was only out for some five to ten minutes.
For all his planning Fowler's enormous ego turned out to be his undoing by later trying to lock horns with cop investigating Claire'a murder the great Lt. Columbo. Fowler should have known, if he ever saw any of his shows on TV, Columbo is an old hat in catching armatures who think of themselves as being super smart master criminals like himself. Which, as it turned out, Fowler was anything but.
It was really Lt. Columbo's fascination with Fowler's character on TV, Det. Lucerne, that had him let the murderer play-act out the crime making it look, to Det. Columbo, that he was solving the very crime that he committed. At the same time Fowler was really trying to implicate an innocent man the murder victims husband Sid, Alan Manson, in the killing.
Columbo on top of Fowler like butter on white bread is with him throughout most of the movie as if he were his Siamese twin brother. The arrogant killer went on and gloated about what a big expert on criminology he was in solving Claire's murder with his magnificent and superior powers of deduction, like a modern late 20th Century Sherlock Holmes. Where he instead was secretly using trickery to throw Columbo off the track in finding that he himself was Calire's killer.
Fowler made a number of very telling mistakes, that were quickly picked up by Let. Columbo, in his grand plan to commit the perfect murder. They had to do with the murder weapon, a handgun from the TV props department, and his friend and all around gofer Mark's expensive platinum watch. Fowler,finagled with the watch not knowing that Mark always kept it five minutes ahead of time so he'll always be on time when running errand's for the big star.
In the end Fowler proved that he was just a petty criminal with an overblown ego who thought the world of himself. Let. Columbo deflated him, and his ego, with the sharp pin of what he developed over the years in the LAPD. Hard learned police methods and intuition and just plain common sense.
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