On December 16th, 1973 the 4th episode of season 3, Double Exposure, premiered. It features the return of Columbo favorite Robert Culp who was the killer in season 1's Death Lends a Hand and season 2's, The Most Crucial Game.
Culp plays Dr. Bart Kepple, a motivation researcher who has pioneered the science of subliminal cuts...and also of using lovely young models to compromise his male clients for blackmail. When one of his clients, Vic Norris, threatens to expose him Kepple uses his own technology to set Norris up for a kill.
What to watch for
Just some things I found interesting about this episode.
The Invisible Lally?
The legendary Michael Lally can be hard to spot but never moreso than this episode. He plays the parking attendant who waves them in and out of the garage. He appears a couple of times, but always in the darkness and on the far side of the car.
The VERY invisible Arlene Martel
Arlene Martel, who previously appeared in The Greenhouse Jungle and subsequently appeared in A Friend in Deed didn't appear at all in Double Exposure despite being credited as Tanya Baker. As it turns out all of her scenes ended up being cut, but she kept her mention in the closing credits.
Chuck McCann
Cool to see Chuck McCann in a serious role. Generally he was known as a puppeteer, comedian, and for children's shows. Here he plays Roger the ill-fated projectionist.
He learns the hard way one of the golden rules of Columbo: Never blackmail the murderer.
Worst fake voice ever?
Bart calls Mrs. Norris with this odd, breathy, fake voice to lure her out of the house. I guess that was the best that Culp could do but still...Tonya Baker is obviously not dating him for his voice.
"Calibration converter"?
Small mistake - at the gotcha when Columbo seizes the evidence he refers to it as as a "calibration converter". I think he meant to say "caliber converter". The scene was otherwise good so either they didn't notice the error or they decided to just leave it in.
Plot Holes
This episode didn't work very well for me and some of that was self-inflicted. For example, Kepple goes to Vic's house and steals his gun to use in Roger's murder. But how did he know Vic had a gun and where to find it? Turns out there's a deleted scene where Kepple and Vic had a confrontation at Vic's house and Vic pulled the gun on him.
And the frame of Mrs. Norris never quite rang true, but again...there was at least one deleted scene for that storyline that might have helped.
Even with a caliber converter I think there'd still be some residue in the gun to indicate it had been fired recently. I'm not an expert on those but I *THINK* all it does is reduce the diameter of the barrel so you can fire sub-caliber rounds.
Why did Bart turn on the tape recorder when he entered the lobby? Would have made more sense for him to turn it on before he came off stage
Columbo eating Kepple's food at the crime scene (and double-dipping the caviar) is awkward and almost certainly a procedural problem. I get that he had to taste to caviar to recognize that it was salty - but he could have known that without eating it at the scene.
Just a few more things...
- Culp is the murderer in 3 episodes and his reactions at the gotcha are always solid. This one might be his best, realizing that he was caught with subliminal cuts he's actually proud, and you can see he's conflicted between being thrilled they used his technique and anguished that he's been caught.
- Columbo mentions when he arrives at the crime scene that he's been working late on the "Hayward case" - a clear reference to the previous episode Candidate for Crime.
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