Murder by prescription

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Movie
German title Murder by Prescription
Columbo: Murder by Prescription
Original title Prescription: Murder
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1968
length 95 minutes
Rod
Director Richard Irving
script Richard Levinson
William Link
production Richard Irving for
Universal Television
music Dave Grusin
camera Ray Rennahan
cut Richard G. Wray
occupation

Murder according to prescription (original title: Prescription: Murder ) is a 1967 crime film, the pilot of the Columbo crime film series, which went into serial production three years later, starring Peter Falk in the title role of a police lieutenant and Gene Barry as his intelligent but ice-cold opponent. The film is based on the five-year-old play " Prescription: Murder " by Richard Levinson and William Link . Both men also wrote the script.

action

Psychiatrist Dr. Ray Flemming is a brilliant mind, a handsome charmer of high intelligence and polished manners. At a party he proves once again that he is intellectually superior to his fellow human beings and friends. His guests admire him, the women adore him, while his wife Carol is rather annoyed by the smugness of her overly smart husband. A little later, Flemming goes to his lover, the much younger actress Joan Hudson, who is also Flemming's patient. Carol suspects that Ray has a lover and confronts him when he returns. The rich Mrs. Flemming gives him an ultimatum and wants him to break up with his lover. Otherwise, she is demanding a divorce. Carol threatens Ray with a tangible scandal and that she will take him out financially. Once again, Ray can convince Carol that he did not go to his lover's house, but rather visited a medical colleague.

Dr. Flemming knows that from now on he will no longer find peace as long as his jealous and increasingly annoying wife is on his neck. Ray speaks to Joan and convinces her to help him get rid of Carol. She is to play a crucial role in his plan. In Flemming's apartment, Flemming finally strangles his wife from behind. Flemming then breaks a window from the outside in order to simulate a break-in. Then he removes her jewelry from his dead wife in order to make a fatal robbery believable. He also steals some valuables from the apartment. Ray's lover enters the apartment, and Ray equips Joan with a wig, sunglasses and a dress that makes her look like the dead Carol Flemming. Killer and lover leave the apartment to fly to Acapulco together. During check-in and boarding, they ensure that several airline employees can see them and later testify that Mr. and Mrs. Flemming went on board together. In their seats, both stage an argument, whereupon "Carol" alias Joan, played angry, leaves the plane.

When Dr. Flemming returns to Los Angeles from Acapulco, he meets the investigating police officer, Lt. Columbo telling Flemming that his wife has been ambushed but is still alive. Flemming, accompanied by Columbo, immediately rushes to the hospital, but is not admitted to Carol. Columbo notices Flemming's unusual reaction when he is informed that his wife has just passed away. Columbo is now reconstructing the case, learning of the couple's quarrel before the plane took off and the stormy departure of the (fake) Mrs. Flemming. Columbo tries to make Flemming increasingly insecure by making comments and pointing out discrepancies, but he quickly sees through the investigator's tricks and mind games and does not allow himself to be deterred in his plan.

A little later, Columbo meets Flemming's lover, and the lieutenant's face clearly shows how he suspects that Joan must play a key role in this case. Then Columbo receives a call: A young man named Tommy has been arrested. In the presence of Columbos and Flemmings, Tommy gives a confession that he broke into the Flemmings and stole the missing valuables. He also confesses to strangling Carol Flemming. Since he claims to have committed the murder from the front, but Carol must clearly have been strangled from behind, Tommy cannot be the culprit. Flemming confronts Columbo with his assumption that the lieutenant only staged the entire Tommy episode as a sleight of hand to unsettle him. Flemming tells Columbo that he apparently suspects that he, Flemming, killed his wife.

The psychiatrist, increasingly annoyed by Columbo's persistence, tries with his contacts to influence that Columbo is withdrawn from this murder case. However, Columbo stubbornly remains on the ball and subliminally makes it clear to his opponent that he will not be outmaneuvered. Flemming, on the other hand, flatters him by telling Columbo that he saw through his scam by the idiot criminal investigator. Soon the game between the two men turns into an intellectual duel between two equal opponents. Columbo wants Flemming to analyze the alleged murderer's phenotype, and Flemming describes himself with a certain intellectual arrogance, but of course denies being his wife's murderer. This type of murderer, well-considered and ice cold, will never be caught, ends Flemming's all too self-assured analysis.

Lieutenant Columbo realizes that the only flaw in Dr. Flemming's perfidious murder construct whose lover Joan Hudson must be, because without her the psychiatrist would never have been able to carry out this crime. The policeman visits Joan on the set and interrogates her, makes her unsure and confronts Joan about the belief that Flemming killed his wife. Then Columbo takes out the sunglasses Joan was wearing when Mrs. Flemming appeared at the airport and confronts her with them. Joan becomes restless and Columbo threatens to have her arrested for an accessory to murder. He tells Joan to drive to the airport at his side wearing a wig and sunglasses to confront the stewardess she saw as Carol Flemming. Columbo increases the pressure, says Joan, that she must have seen the body on the day of the murder: in the apartment. "Without your help, this woman would still be alive!" Columbo yells at Joan, who then threatens to lose her nerve. But Dr. Flemming's accomplice recovers, and Columbo has to hope to find another way to break Joan. “You are the weak link in his chain”, he tells her when he leaves, “but there is always a tomorrow and a day after tomorrow”. Columbo makes it clear to Joan that he will make her life hell until she finally unpacks.

A little later, completely relaxed, Joan calls her lover, but he can calm her down. When Flemming expected Joan the next day and she didn't come, he was startled by a phone call. It is said that there was an accident in Joan's country house. Worried, Flemming drives to his lover's house, where Columbo is already waiting. The psychiatrist rushes to the swimming pool, where it appears as if Joan Hudson's body is being laid out and removed. Columbo says she took sleeping pills and killed herself. He admits that he interrogated and attacked Joan yesterday, and that she probably killed herself to protect Ray. He reacts very coldly. Now that Hudson was dead, he no longer had to pretend that this woman had ever meant anything to him. Columbo replies that Flemming owes her something and that he should finally confess. Ray Flemming says with a cold smile that he never loved Hudson, calls her a "cheap little actress" and that he could have gotten rid of her if he had only wanted to. That was one sentence too many. Because now Joan Hudson appears - alive and well. Dr. Flemming fell for a ruse by Columbos, the "corpse" was just a woman who was specially hired for it. At the end Columbo asks Miss Hudson if she finally wants to make a confession, which she finally does.

Prehistory and stage presentation

On July 31, 1960 ran in the anthology series The Chevy Mystery Show, the 60-minute episode Enough Rope , which was also already written by Link and Levinson. In this Bert Freed played Columbo and Richard Carlson was as Dr. To see Flemming.

Link and Levinson developed their script to the literary template Prescription: Murder , which was premiered as a play in January 1962 at the Curran Theater in San Francisco. It ran for 25 weeks, most recently on May 26, 1962 at the Shubert Theater in Boston. The role of Columbo was taken on by Hollywood and Broadway veteran Thomas Mitchell , whose last role this would be. He died that same year. Joseph Cotten appeared as Mitchell's opponent. Although the play received poor reviews, it was an extraordinary success with the audience. In a comparison between a play and a film, the figure of Dr. Flemming is drawn a little more friendly, so Cottens shows Flemming sincere love for his affair Joan.

Production notes

Murder According to a Recipe was mostly made as a studio production in 1967, the final scene in Joan Hudson's modern country house was shot in Stahl House in the Hollywood Hills . The American premiere of the film took place on February 20, 1968. In Germany, the film was shown for the first time on the late Saturday evening of October 11, 1969 on ARD. It has been repeated several times since then.

Columbo was voiced in the German dubbed version by Uwe Friedrichsen , his opponent Ray Flemming (Gene Barry) by Helmo Kindermann . Incidentally, both voice actors also spoke in the following two films in the series:

  • the film Ransom for a Dead, shot in 1970 and broadcast in 1971 (Kindermann was the voice of Harold Gould );
  • the 1972 film Gossip Can Be Deadly, which was broadcast in 1973 (Kindermann was Mel Ferrer's voice here ).

For veteran Hollywood motion picture cameraman Ray Rennahan , Murder by Prescription was his third last job before retiring in the early 1970s.

useful information

The film was conceived as a single production in 1967, so it is not really a series. It wasn't until 1970 that the Los Angeles police investigator went into series production. Even in the early days, one could examine the typical ingredients, including the widely played out quirks of the investigator, of a typical Columbo crime novel: “Columbo's understatement image, paired with great tenacity and an incorruptible perception and logic, often justified the success of this from his opponents underrated figure. Columbo's trick was always to appear as the somewhat absent-minded investigator with a dented, cracking Peugeot and a crumpled trench coat and thus to lull the main suspect into deceptive security. "

Falk is said to have received the Columbo role in 1967 only after the previously desired actors Bing Crosby and Lee J. Cobb were not available. The former showed no interest in the role, while Cobb cited scheduling problems as the reason.

Reviews

The Movie & Video Guide said: “Interesting debut by Falks Columbo with an excellent cast and subplots. [...] Above average. "

The lexicon of international film found: "Technically conventional, but exciting thriller."

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Columbo is also always called "Lieutenant" in the German dubbed version of this film; the Germanization common in this country as "Inspector Columbo" only took place in the early 1970s when the character went into series production.
  2. ^ Enough rope. Accessed December 1, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Prescription: Murder on columbo-site.freeuk
  4. ↑ Columbo poster. Accessed December 1, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Kay Less : The large personal dictionary of films , Volume 2, pp. 609 f., Berlin 2001
  6. ^ Obituary for Peter Falk in the New York Times
  7. ^ Leonard Maltin : Movie & Video Guide, 1996 edition, p. 1034
  8. ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): Lexikon des Internationale Films, Volume 5, L to M, p. 2652. Rowohlt-Taschenbuchverlag, Reinbek 1987

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