We Love Detectives Blogathon: Starsky & Hutch - Favorite Episodes

Starsky and Hutch ran for four seasons from 1975-1979.  I was introduced to the show and fell instantly in love sometime in the mid-90s. I had almost all the episodes taped on VHS and re-watched them a lot.  Paul Michael Glaser as David Starsky and David Soul as Ken "Hutch" Hutchinson just have that perfect chemistry that makes their partnership as police detectives sparkle. Watching them banter, look out for each other, argue, insult each other's cars, care for each other, pull pranks on Captain Dobey, work with the always cool and smooth Huggy Bear, and outsmart the bad guys just never gets old.  

Hutch is still my favorite of the two, but it's impossible not to adore Starsky too.  They're true partners, and if you remove one, it would wreck what makes the show so great.

Some episodes are definitely showing their age (beyond the 70's clothes, scenery, and music) with how some subject matter is handled, but the majority of them hold up quite well.  And for me, the location filming of late 70's Los Angeles and surrounds is pure comfort food for me.  That's when I was a kid growing up there, so seeing places I used to drive by, seeing the particular look of the buildings, cars, homes, etc. as I remember them from growing up, supplies all the nostalgia and warms my heart.  Those were good times.

I recently re-watched the entire series, and as I did, I confirmed my favorite episodes.  Interestingly, all of these are my favorites from when I originally watched the show.  The order of ranking may have changed, but the episodes that first made an impression are me are still the ones to which I gravitate.

So, without further ado:

10. "Satan's Witches"

Starsky and Hutch head up to the mountains for a vacation, only to find the locals in a downright unfriendly mood.  This turns out to be because there's a nasty cult who has taken up residence in the woods and they're holding the local sheriff's daughter hostage.

So, this episode makes the list because of the first half.  The second half is... okay, and obviously necessary to deal with the actual plot stuff, but the first half is pure gold.  It's focus is the vacationing detectives.  You see, Hutch is comfortable in the outdoors and can't wait for this vacation; Starsky's a city boy out of his element and freaking out over literally everything... their dialogue and antics are an absolute riot.  If the entire episode had been nothing but this, it'd be my number one favorite.

9. "Fatal Charm"

AKA Starsky and Hutch meets Fatal Attraction.  Hutch has a one-night stand with a nurse, but things go south in a big hurry when she becomes ultra-obsessed with him... to the point of her trying to murder him when he rejects her. 

As if Psycho wasn't enough to discourage anyone from taking a shower... this episode adds to that.  Still, if you're going to have a dangerous stalker episode, this one is well-done, and the ending is tense. 

8. "The Fix"

Hutch's current girlfriend "belongs" to a mobster, and when he wants her back, he kidnaps Hutch.  When beating Hutch up fails to get him to talk, the bad guy (Robert Loggia) strings him out on heroin to get him to spill where she is hiding.  Starsky has to find and then get his partner off the drugs, while also catching the bad guys.  

Rough stuff, really, but watching Starsky and Huggy Bear help Hutch is always satisfying, 

7. "A Body Worth Guarding"

Starsky and Hutch are assigned bodyguard duty for a Russian ballerina targeted for assassination.  Hutch falls for her.

Okay, I admit.  I mostly love this episode for Hutch's singing, though the rest isn't bad.  When Hutch and Anna start to discover they have more in common than they think, and they arm wrestle is quite amusing too.  As is her calling Starsky "Starevsky."  Hutch's song used to be on youtube, but alas, that's long gone.  Now, I can only find the whole episode, though if this let me share it correctly, this video should cue up to his song.

6. "Shootout"

Starsky and Hutch head to a restaurant to grab dinner, only to find themselves in the middle of a hit on a mob boss.

Starsky gets shot!  Hutch has to out think the bad guys while in the middle of being held hostage.   Well done, tense, but with time to get to know a little bit about the other hostages.  Love it! Albert Paulsen is one of the hitmen, and I always enjoy seeing actors from Combat! pop up in this show.

5. "Survival"

To prevent Hutch from testifying, the bad guy has him run off the road in the hills, leaving Starsky to find his partner before the car crash or the bad guys do him in. 

I have a thing for people trapped with time running out.  Throw in a WWII veteran who thinks the war is still going on and a smart kid who's a ham radio operator, the bad guy realizing he failed to kill Hutch in the crash and heading out to finish the job, and there's an awful lot going on in the episode.  I'm always amused when Michael Jackson (the talk show host, not the pop singer) is playing on Hutch's car radio.  His voice is so familiar from the past when my dad used to listen to him.

4. "The Psychic"

When a girl is kidnapped and held for ransom, and the traditional police methods end up failing, Starsky and Hutch convince a psychic to help them.

I love this one most for the "mad dash" scene, where Hutch has to sprint from payphone to payphone downtown at the whim of a psychotic kidnapper, but it's a solid episode.  The bad guys play for keeps, and the last half with time running out for the kidnapped girl is very tense.

3. "Gillian"

Hutch falls for Gillian, not knowing she's really working as a prostitute.  When she attempts to leave that life to start a new one with Hutch, the gangsters she works for refuse to let that happen.

Mike Kellin (another Combat! alum) and Sylvia Sidney (!) as his mother (!) are the bad guys in this, and I love that.  Doodles Weaver also has a small part, and it's a delight to see someone whose voice I grew up with (from all those Spike Jones records).  This is no spoiler, because everyone knows love stories on old episodic televisions series never end with a happily ever after.  It's just a given.  You couldn't tie your main character down back then.  This show is no exception, but it handles it really really well, and the fact that it's a relationship I really want to work out just makes the episode even better.  Starsky trying to protect Hutch is always a bonus.

2. "Vendetta"

Starsky and Hutch investigate some brutal beatings and murders, which leads to the bad guy responsible targeting Hutch and everything he loves.

Oh, how I love this episode.  A quite dark one, with twisted characters and unexpected violent moments.  The main bad guy, Arty Solkin (played by Stefan Gierasch), is an unlikely adversary on the surface, so full of weird quirks.  He's half-pathetic, half-threatening.  The actor does an absolutely fabulous job of bringing him to life and making Solkin feel real and original, more so than many characters throughout the show.  The unexpected moments shocked the heck out of me when I first saw this episode, one in particular.  

1. "Tap Dancing Her Way Right Back into Your Hearts"

Starsky and Hutch go undercover at a dance studio to stop a blackmail ring.

Perhaps an unlikely choice for number one, but it's the one I've watched more than any other.   I adore this episode.  I even used to have it on audio tape (taped off the video, LOL) and I used to listen to it in my car while driving.  I never did that with any other episodes from this show.  

It's got a lot of humor, which always appeals to me.  Starsky and Hutch undercover as a Latin dance instructor (Starsky) and a wealthy rancher taking dance lessons (Hutch) never ceases to amuse me.  The dialogue, the part when they foil a robbery at a grocery store while dressed in their undercover outfits, "no one can dip like Ramone," Hutch is ridiculously attractive in his Texas cattle rancher outfit, particularly the morning after, ahem.  Where "Vendetta" is super tense, this one is lighter and full of delightful silliness.  This episode simply makes me happy all the way around.

Other eps super close to making the top ten... "A Coffin for Starsky," "Murder at Sea," "Bloodbath," "The Game.," "Murder Ward," and "Deckwatch," 

This has been my entry to Hamlette's We Love Detectives Week blogathon! 

And now, we'll end on a video with funny clips from the show involving food.  Lots of the show's humor on display here... :-D

 

We Love Detectives Blogathon: Tag Answers

It's time for  Hamlette's "We Love Detective Week" over at Hamlette's Soliloquy.  We're kicking off the posts with some answers to her tag questions.

 

What's your favorite mystery with...

 1. ...a historical setting?
Enola Holmes (2020).  Enola Holmes surprised me by being super fun but also having heart.  I didn't expect to like Enola herself so much, but she is awesome, and I'd watch a sequel in a heartbeat.  Her story involves running away from home and her famous brothers to locate her missing mother in London.  Along the way, she solves the mystery of who is trying to kill a young nobleman.  If they ever decide to release this one on blu-ray instead of just leaving it on Netflix, I'd snap it up.  The costumes and scenery are lovely.

2. ...a modern setting?
Black Rain (1989) - Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia play NY detectives tasked with escorting a prisoner they caught back to Japan, only to lose him before they even exit the plane.  They team up with Japanese detective Ken Takakura to track down the prisoner and figure out what's going really going on.  Ridley Scott directs and it is a well-done, action-packed movie that mixes the mystery with the culture clash of America/Japan police procedures.

3. ...a lone detective?
Murder, My Sweet (1944) - this was kind of a hard one, as almost all the movies I could think of have more than one detective, or partners, or a detective backed up by the police or his department, etc.  Finding one with just one was harder than I expected.  So, going with this one, which I love.  Dick Powell is the lone detective in over his head. 

4. ...a pair of sleuths?
The Nice Guys (2016) - Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling investigate a murder which leads into a conspiracy/cover up.  This film is written and directed by Shane Black, so that means it's full of witty dialogue, moments of unexpected violence, plot twists, and that it definitely earns its R rating.  Like Black's Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (which would be my second choice for this question), it is also highly amusing and makes me laugh a lot, but then, I'm also a fan of Shane Black's writing.

5. ...a professional/police detective?
L.A. Confidential (1997) - There are so many films that could have fit this category, but I'm going with one of my favorites.  This movie is so well done.  Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey knock it out of the park.  I have a thing for stories where characters come at the same problem from different directions, which is what happens here.  And when enemies ultimately join forces to take down the bad guys... I find that super satisfying.  Throw in a Jerry Goldsmith score and I'm in.

6. ...an amateur detective?
Five Card Stud (1968) - A Western mystery, with Dean Martin turning detective to uncover who is murdering the participants of a poker game that turned fatal.  I quite enjoy this movie.  The cast is great - Dean Martin, Robert Mitchum, Yaphet Kotto, Roddy McDowell - and it is neat to have a murder mystery unfold in a Western setting.

7. ...a young sleuth?
The Adventures of TinTin (2011) - Tin-Tin is technically a journalist, but, as the entire movie is about solving a mystery and he does a better job at detective work than most, it's my answer for this question.  After Tin-Tin purchases a model of a ship called the Unicorn, he gets more than he bargained for, and he rapidly finds his life threatened as he begins digging into the mystery of the the ship's history and everything that goes with it.  Fast-paced, witty, and super-fun.  It may be computer-animated, but the visuals are first-rate, as are the cast of Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, and Daniel Craig. 

8. ...an aging detective?
Falling Down (1993) - Robert Duvall is the aging police sergeant about to retire who investigates a series of crimes, tying them all together and tracking down Michael Douglas's rampaging character.  Robert Duvall never turns in a bad performance, and he's perfect here.  I love his scenes with his wife, and how he perseveres and figures out what's going on.  Michal Douglas is fun as the unlikely antagonist who takes the frustration of a Los Angeles traffic jam and turns it into a full-on rampage against the system, thinking he's the the good guy for righting the clear wrongs he sees around him.

9. ...a cozy feel?
I'm not sure what this one means, so I'm going with a movie that makes me feel cozy.  And that is Topper Returns (1941).  Rolland Young reprises his role as Topper, but this time Joan Blondell is the ghost trying to solve the mystery of her own murder and save her friend in a rather creepy mansion.  Topper with Cary Grant and Constance Bennett may be more famous, but Topper Returns was my family's favorite.  We used to watch this movie over and over when I was young.  I haven't seen it in years now, but we still quote it.  "May I suggest, sir, that you break the glass?"

10. ...a shocking reveal?
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) - A favorite very dark noir film of mine, and I absolutely love the reveal of what Ralph Meeker's detective character has been pursuing without knowing it the entire time.  And that ending!!  *cackles in glee* - so much unexpected stuff, so freaky, so cool, so unexpected the first time you see the movie.  Love it, in fact I'm way overdue for a re-watch of this one.

So, there you have it.  Pop over to Hamlette's page to find links to the other entries in this blogathon.  I'll be posting an entry about my favorite police detectives later this week.

The Prisoner of Zenda (1979)

 I've wanted to see this film a long time, mostly to see Stuart Wilson play Rupert of Hentzau.  I discovered the full movie lurking on youtube, so took the opportunity finally to watch it.

It's a comedy.  It's Peter Sellers... which tells you all you need to know.  I'm not a particular fan of either, so I'm not the audience for this film.  This isn't a good movie, but neither is it terrible.  The humor is forced and dated, and, alas, I didn't laugh once.  Though I did smile at the owl/chicken disguised calls for help.  Peter Sellers was annoying as Rupert the king, and it was very hard to understand his dialogue.  He was much better as the straight Sidney Frewin (this version's equivalent of Rudolf Rassendyll).  Frewin is a hansom cab driver, which ended up being an intriguing switch.  I did like that Frewin made no attempt to sound like the king while masquerading as him.  He simply didn't speak at all, nodding or mumbling single words instead.  It was refreshing to have the character admit there is no way he could truly impersonate the king.  I also liked that when it came to defending himself, he chose a whip instead of a sword, availing himself of his hansom cab experience.  I really dug that change.  It made for some cool moments in the end fight.  Those moments elevated the movie.

Another thing I liked was the location filming in Austria.  The countryside, castles, and cities were all beautiful.

As for Stuart Wilson, he was my favorite part of the movie, naturally, but even his part was done no favors by the comedy format.  He laughs constantly, in a most annoying manner throughout.  It was over the top and detracted from the character.  I would really like to have seen Stuart Wilson given the chance to play Rupert of Hentzau in a serious version.  If he did well in this version, he would have totally rocked a serious version of Prisoner of Zenda.

Crazy laugh aside, he was handsome and reckless and fearless, as Rupert is supposed to be.  And, of course, I was looking forward to watching him sword fight, as Stuart Wilson is an excellent swordsman.  I was not disappointed.  The movie had Rupert rather inexplicably switch sides in the ending and become a good guy (!).  I approved, however, because it meant Rupert got to fight Michael instead of Frewin.  Michael was played by Jeremy Kemp, another actor quite capable in the sword fighting realm (he plays the bad guy in The Seven-Percent Solution, which has one of my favorite sword fights in it - on top of a train).  The fight between Michael and Rupert was the best part of the movie.  An enthusiastic, fast, brawling duel with swords.  More please!  

The movie concludes with Rudolf heading off to London to continue his dissolute idle layabout routine to his heart's content, while Frewin, former hansom cab driver, marries Princess Flavia and becomes the new king in his place.  In this movie, that change worked well.

I was also amused when John Rhys-Davies showed up with a quick uncredited role as a palace guard with one line of dialogue.  There's no mistaking that voice (or look) anywhere!  

All in all, mostly a waste of time, though it had some moments of promise, and some nice changes to the story that it, unfortunately, didn't quite capitalize on, and some nice fighting at the end.

Happy Birthday, John Williams!

Today marks John William's 90th birthday.  He has produced some of the finest scores and musical moments over his prolific career.  To celebrate, I'm sharing one of my all-time favorite cues.  This is one of those sublime cues that soars and crescendos with all the beauty and emotion a composer can pack into a short cue.  The first half builds and lets the choir carry the power until the horns come in and really kick off the goosebumps.  The second half of the cue is gentler, but when the string section takes over the melody, it's still stirring and full of emotion.  I never tire of hearing John William's genius at work in the composition of this cue.

This is "You are the Pan" from John William's 1991 score to Hook.