After five strong episodes, Columbo’s fourth season closed
on April 27th, 1975, with one of the show’s most audacious ideas: a
killer who tries to use hypnosis (and chemistry) not just to cover up a crime,
but to manufacture a second one. It’s glossy, chilly, and very 1975—complete
with a rich beach house, a sleek car, and a villain who thinks he’s smarter
than everyone in the room.
Our murderer is Dr. Mark Collier (George Hamilton): a celebrated psychiatrist,
a charismatic operator, and the kind of Columbo antagonist who can smile while
he’s steering people into disaster. His patient—and lover—Nadia Donner (Lesley
Ann Warren) is fragile enough that you can see the catastrophe coming.
Cold open: therapy, control, and a terrible idea
The episode starts right in Collier’s element: a hypnosis
session with Nadia, and the sense that he’s digging for something specific.
He’s not just “treating” her—he’s mining her. When his lab partner, Dr. Anita
Borden (Karen Machon), notices hypnosis-related drugs missing from their
research stash, but to be honest that feels like an unnecessary side plot that
never really gets explored.
The beach house blow-up
Nadia invites Collier to her beach house while her husband, Carl
(Stephen Elliott), is supposedly away. Of course, Carl is not away—he’s
waiting. What follows is a toxic little chamber drama: Carl threatens to expose
Collier’s affair and his drugging of Nadia; Collier tries to keep control; and Carl
attacks Collier and Nadia.
Collier grabs a fireplace poker and hits Carl as he’s attacking Nadia –
inadvertently killing him. And here’s where the story seems to escalate
unnecessarily. The actual murder was plausibly self-defense. Carl was attacking
Nadia and Collier. It’s unlikely Collier would have been convicted of murder
for this. And frankly it seems like it would have been an easier lie to sell
that Nadia was in crisis and had called him as her psychiatrist. He went over
to help her, found Carl attacking her, and stepped in. But that wouldn’t be
much of a Columbo episode, I guess.
So instead, he hands Nadia a story to tell the
police—intruders, guns, robbery—and then he bolts to build his alibi.
Like Carl? He’ll be back…
Carl is played by Stephen Elliott. He’ll be back in Season 8
as General Padgett in Grand Deceptions. Outside of Columbo you might
recognize him as the grouchy police chief in Beverly Hills Cop or as angry father
of the bride, Burt Johnson, in Arthur.
Columbo arrives: the story doesn’t fit
From the second Columbo starts talking to Nadia, he’s
hearing the gears grind. She can’t keep the details straight, and the story
doesn’t quite work. Cars that apparently arrive silently, gunmen who don’t use
guns, drawers rifled with no prints. And how would either of the robbers be
smoking if they were wearing stocking masks? Columbo isn’t buying the “home
invasion” story.
The tiny clue with a big payoff
One of the episode’s key leads is Columbo spotting a
minuscule flint nub from a cigarette lighter at the crime scene. On its own
it’s nothing, but it plants the idea that someone in that house was a smoker—and
that their lighter suddenly wouldn’t work. Later, Columbo notices Collier
lighting cigarettes with matches… and, eventually, a brand-new flint in
Collier’s lighter.
Nadia takes the plunge
Collier decides Nadia is too unstable to survive a lie
detector test, so he tries to remove her as a liability. Using hypnosis, he
programs her to believe she’s overheating and needs to go swimming when she
hears a trigger phrase on the phone. Nadia undresses, tucks valuables into her
shoe like she’s headed for a swim, and leaps from her high balcony.
Is it far-fetched? Absolutely. But it’s also memorable, and it gives the
episode its distinctive eerie tone: murder not by brute force, but by
suggestion.
I’m not sure that suspect is a strong enough word.
One of my favorite ‘rare Columbo’ moments: he snaps
Columbo is usually a picture of patience, even when he’s
cornering a killer. But here, exhausted and rattled by Nadia’s death, he
presses Dr. Borden for straight answers about what’s possible with hypnosis and
drugs. When she tries to brush him off, he barks: “No, I’m asking you about a
murder!” It’s a jolt, and it works because he’s so restrained everywhere else.
The gotcha: blind man’s bluff
For the finale Columbo sets up Collier with a witness who claims he saw Collier speed away from the Donner driveway. Collier scoffs, because the witness is supposedly blind.
Only the ‘blind’ witness calmly reads a magazine aloud—because he isn’t blind
at all. The real blind man appears a moment later, complete with guide dog.
Columbo’s point is delicious: Collier gave himself away by confidently
identifying the first man as blind. He could only ‘know’ that if he’d actually
seen the real blind man at the Donner driveway that day. The eyewitness isn’t
the witness. It’s Collier.
Fred Draper
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