User Reviews

Some cases Jim Rockford does for $200.00 a day plus expenses. But there are some that he gets dragged into one way or another. This particular episode has James Garner dragged in when the son of an old friend comes to his empty trailer looking for help and a neighbor witnesses a kidnapping.

Bill Thornbury who was the student does leave his automobile there which gives Garner a starting edge. Thornbury was a journalism student and on to what Garner describes as 'one hellacious story' without even knowing all the facts. Frances Lee McCain who was his faculty adviser and a bit more continues on albeit with a little push from Garner.

The villain of the piece is campus security chief Kenneth Tobey who's a scary dude. But there are a couple of guys with Middle Eastern accents who scare Tobey a lot more than Tobey scares Garner with a clumsy attempt at a frame up for a rape charge.

Young Mr. Thornbury who did turn up dead on a beach was indeed on to one hellacious story. What it was you have to see this well done Rockford Files episode for.

In this episode Rockford is driving a two round headlight gold Pontiac Firebird at the first of the show. Later he is shown driving a 4 square headlight gold Pontiac Firebird. This second car shown in the second half of the show is a newer model year. Ooops! Did Jimmy have two Firebirds at the same time? Also, the fleeing student being chased by the hoods in the convertible Buick Wildcat had a nifty MG B car that we all would like to have had in high school. The actress portraying Leslie the hollow headed tenure seeking professor needs to go to some courses at the Ava Garner School for new actresses in Smithfield NC as her acting was rather flat. Rockford usually has better co-stars in his shows.

I'm usually a fan of films that take place at a college, as I enjoy the student atmosphere, and I also enjoyed this episode for the most part, although the ending was slightly underwhelming. I just checked the release dates, and this episode came out months before the influential Animal House(1978), and there's a few lines uttered by a student along the lines of "thank you sir, may I have another" while talking to Rockford during a hazing event. I don't think John Landis would admit to being influenced by this episode, assuming he even saw it, but there are some similar aspects between them that it makes me wonder. Rockford, while undercover says a word I never heard of, "mageester", to a few frat house members, and I have no idea what it means, and once again, the word "berlitz" is used, and I haven't heard this mentioned anywhere else other than this show, but I digress. Without going into too much detail, he's at the college looking for a student who he knows, but he ends up murdered because he secretly recorded tapes of a kidnapped student, who's the son of a wealthy king from another country. He teams up with the older lover of Paul Douglas, who also happens to be a professor at the college and Paul's adviser in more ways than one, and eventually the crooked security guard, who's behind the death of Paul and the wealthy king's son in a botched kidnapping scheme, gets shot in the leg and subsequently captured by private investigator's of the king in a average conclusion. Dennis and Rocky have a couple scenes, and look for a familiar face in Barney McFadden(Salem's Lot), who plays one of Paul's killers. Overall, I enjoyed the college campus and settings, and thought this was a solid episode, but the ending left me wanting more.