(Review originally written at 26 April 2008)

Of course every Columbo movie is a cat and mouse play between the Lieutenant and the killer but in this movie this is perhaps more the case than in any other Columbo movie. This is mostly due to Leonard Nimoy and Lt. Columbo gets on his back pretty early on during their first meeting already. There is some great interaction between those two. It's great also to see Columbo get angry for once.

Leonard Nimoy is actually one scary looking dude and he has a great villainous look over him. Too bad he never really made a career as playing villains, I'm sure he would had been just perfect for it. He shows some great acting skills in this movie. Also Peter Falk is great once more as the scruffy Lieutenant, that also suffers from insomnia and is ill (again) this time. There is always something unusual going on with him.

The movie features all of the usual Columbo ingredients and it handles them well, so therefor this movie can be regarded as a simply good and also definitely above average Columbo entry. Also the amount of relieving comedy is just enough to also regard this movie as an entertaining one, without loosing any of its credibility as a murder-mystery.

The movie its story is using a fine setting of an hospital, that seems to really suit murder mysteries. It's like the story is really much special but its strong enough to keep you interested throughout. The killer himself is also definitely clever enough to provide the movie with some good clever moments. It's also all being told in a good quick pace, which makes the movie perfectly good to watch. It's one fine put together movie. It's definitely a step up from Hy Averback's previously directed Columbo movie "Columbo: Suitable for Framing". Also makes it sort of too bad that Shirl Hendryx never delivered any more Columbo screenplays. As a matter of fact he hardly wrote anything again after this and it seems to me that it was more of a writer who wrote stage-plays instead.

A great Columbo entry that follows the usual formula and does very little wrong doing so.

8/10

(Review originally written at 5 April 2008)

This is by no means a classic genre movie but for a low budget independent '70's horror movie it also certainly is one fine watchable movie.

Biggest problem with this movie is that there is no main character. Basically for the first third of the movie you only see different murders occur. You just keep waiting for the movie to introduce its main 'hero'. Some times character's roles become bigger in the movie and you expect the rest of the movie to be focused entirely around them but every time then the movie cuts away again and takes a whole other direction with its story and characters. So not really the most consistent movie around.

It's an '70's movie, so the movie uses lots of unusual experimental editing. It's fine looking but yet it doesn't all quite work out well enough. The movie uses the proper right required horror build up for its sequences but yet when it comes down to its most important part; the scare moments, the movie falls short. The movie just never knows to become truly tense and perhaps you can even call the movie a bit boring in parts. This is also due to some of the pacing problems of the movie. The fact that we get to know who the killer is pretty early on in the movie (the hairy arms gave it away) also takes away a lot of the tension and mystery atmosphere of the movie.

Even though the movie gets gory in parts, I mean the murders are being committed with the contents of a toolbox, how can it not be gory but it's just never really shocking.

Still fans of this sub-genre will probably most likely still enjoy and appreciate this movie.

5/10