User Reviews

Who did it, or did anybody do it? That is the theme of "The Deadly Jinx". Meredith Baxter is great as character "Jenny Sutherland" in the first half of the story, but as it progresses, she over-plays the part. Even so, it is definitely worth watching.

An excellent showcase for young Meredith Baxter, whose career was just taking off at about this time.

She is the one to watch here. Meredith plays Jenny, a woman looking for love but with lots of bad kharma tied to anybody who comes her way. And just why?

This one will keep you guessing. Make no mistake. Well directed by Robert Douglas, who at the time was directing both the F. B. I. And CANNON. Robert had a legendary career as a distinguished actor, usually playing villains(!) and, later a popular tv director.

When he retired he appeared in documentaries discussing classic Hollywood and many stories about working with Errol Flynn and Robert Taylor.

Special appearance here by Ida Lupino, playing Kathy, who was a successful director herself for many years. Christopher Connelly has a very good role as Doug, one of Jenny's suiters.

I do agree with the notes that the boat explosion DOES look animated. The production crew probably borrowed the idea from MANNIX, famous for explosions! Beautifully filmed at the historic town of Piru, California, about 50 miles north of Los Angeles. The population in 2020 was at 2100. You could only imagine how many folks lived there in the 70s when this was filmed. Also production work done at nearby Santa Paula, another beautiful spot.

Keep the late, late coffee brewing.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 15 remastered CBS dvd box set.

Jenny (Meredith Baxter) seems to have a lot of bad luck with boyfriends. Doug was very serious about her...and he fell off a horse and became paralyzed. As for her other boyfriends, they fared worse....as one after the other, they kept dying by supposed accidents. Her aunt ((da Lupino) is concerned and hires Barnaby to investigate.

This is a terrible episode though I cannot completely blame the show. At the time, the notion of multiple personalities was popular because of the film "The Three Faces of Eve" and a couple years after "The Deadly Jinx", the mini-series "Sybil" made the notion of multiple personalities very plausible. In recent years, however, most therapists seem to be of the mind that no such disorder exists and ample evidence has come out that famous cases were either faked or were influenced by the films and stories.

Even if you ignore the silly psychological mumbo jumbo in this show, Meredith Baxter's acting is a big deficit (there's little in the way of subtlety)...and the script is silly nonsense. Among the poorer episodes of season two....and a big disappointment.

There is a misapprehension that animation techniques were used to create the powerboat explosion. Actually, in many television and theatrical films where the budget was limited (which was the case with most television series in the sixties and seventies), the cost would have been prohibitive to destroy a boat just to move the plot along. It was cheaper to simply add a matte effect in post production to make it seem that the boat exploded. Barnaby Jones employed this technique often. In a number of episodes airplane crashes were simulated with the same matte effect. It saved money and was hardly noticeable in the days before HD TV.