User Reviews

Firstly I love Columbo. I think it is the best written, and most intriguing of all Murder Mystery dramas.

However I am not sure on this one. The basic plot is that a rich stepfather, is killed by his stepson (McDowell) with an exploding Cigar Case which makes his car explode. As usual Columbo resists all normal lines of interrogation and starts finding those small clues to highlight who the real culprit is. The final reveal is brilliant (Columbo, Company VP and McDowall in a Cable Car with the exploding case. Columbo knows that McDowall will try to get rid of the case before it explodes and kills them all, but the trick is its not the original case) And now why I don't like this episode, and I have to admit its common in Columbo episodes...The villain. McDowall's inane laughter was just so grating. He acted to portray a childish person, but it just comes off so "lame", even though he is supposed to have great intelligence proved by his concoction of his plan. For me he ruined this entire episode, because no-one would have believed him in real life. Case in point :- When he finds the photos of his stepdad with the secretary and doesn't want his mother to see them. Over the top acting, which detracts from Columbos brilliance Best Columbo villain for me ? The Great Santini (Cant remember the episode), or the Conductor from Etude. The best villains are the ones who don't over-act, but are cool ,calm and cerebral

If it wasn't for the stunning mountain scenery and the role it plays in this story, I'd probably only give this episode seven. But the dramatic cable car scenes certainly add an interesting dimension to this intricately plotted Columbo adventure.

Roger Stanford is extremely annoying, I can't deny, but I don't have any problem with Columbo murderers being annoying. It just makes their eventual arrest that much more satisfying. And the way in which Stanford incriminates himself is very enjoyable.

I find the ins and outs of the plot quite a lot to take in, despite repeated viewings. It all revolves around the wheelings and dealings of a large family-run chemical corporation. The murder is caused by a home-made bomb planted into a cigar case.

It's not the best, it's not the worst, but it's highly watchable.

Roger Stanford (Roddy McDowall) decides to kill his uncle David L.Buckner (James Gregory) using exploding cigars.Lt.Columbo's job is to prove the death of Mr. Buckner wasn't an accident.Columbo: Short Fuse (1972) is a very good first season episode.Peter Falk's Columbo, an avid fans of cigars gets to investigate a case of exploding ones.Roddy McDowall makes a great villain in this one.Ida Lupino plays his aunt Doris.Anne Francis plays Valerie Bishop.William Windom is Everett Logan.A brilliant cast.Columbo entertains in Short Fuse as he always does.The last sequence high in the lift is great to watch.Columbo makes Roger a little nervous when he makes him believe he has the exploding cigars with him.He's always one step ahead of the crooks.

***SPOILERS*** On the verge of being forced out of the family business sly and cunning Roger Standford,Roddy McDowall, plans to both set up his uncle the president of Standford Chemical David L. Buckner, James Gregory. the set-up is to be a faked affair with his private secretary Valerie Bishop, Ann Francis, and his uncle's private investigator and part-time chauffeur Quincy, Lawrence Cook, as the man who's blackmailing him.

Besides his obvious dislike of Uncle Buckner who's been trying to get rid of the buffoonish Roger for years Roger also has in for PI Quincy who got all the goods on him, Rogers gambling in the casinos with the company's money. If his aunt Doris, Ida Lupino, ever got wind of it Roger would be disowned and written out of her will.

Rigging up a box of exploding Cubans Cigars Roger sneaks it into Uncle Buckner's limo with a timer made to activate and explode a minute after the box is opened. With both Uncle Bunker and Quincy driving up to see aunt Doris that evening the car explodes after Uncle Buckner pulls out a cigar. Lt. Columbo, Peter Falk, is immediately put on the case being, as Aunt Doris said, he's considered to be by the L.A police commissioner the best man for the job.

Roger trying to act like a brainless smuck at first makes like he's completely unaware of his uncle's plans to can him out of the family business. Columbo suspects that the accident, which the tragic deaths of Uncle Buckner & Quincy was first reported as, was no accident at all but premeditated murder but didn't have the proof. Roger putting plan 2 into motion then implicated his Uncle Buckner and his secretary, Valerie, in an illicit affair and putting the blame of it coming out into the open on the company's vice president Everett Logan(William Windom), a bitter enemy of Buckner, with the deceased Quincy as his co-conspirator and fellow blackmailer. Getting an enraged Aunt Doris, who's the majority stock holder, to fire both Logan and even poor and unsuspecting Valerie. Doris then puts Roger in as chairman of the board of Standford Chemical a position that he wanted all of his adult life.

Lt. Columbo sets a trap for the arrogant Roger by playing on his ego in thinking that he's infallible and above the law. Cloumb does this by trapping Roger, with the help of Everett Logan, on a sky tram hundreds of feet above the ground. Telling the smug and conceited Roger that the deaths of his uncle and Quincy were in fact an accident Lt. Columbo surprises the double-murderer with a box of cigars! the box that Roger planted in Uncle Buckner's car.

Columbo breaking open the seal, which is supposed to start the minute explosive timer, Roger goes totally nuts trying to get off the tram before the box explodes practically confessing to the crime! As you guessed it the box was a fake which was obvious to anyone watching the movie but not to the super-intelligent Roger.

This review does contain spoilers, so be forewarned.

I found what I consider to be a major problem with the main plot (below).

First, like many Columbo movies, Columbo has no real proof to work with but only speculation that seems like an uphill battle to really prove. In this episode, after a car containing victim David L. Buckner, the President of the Chemicial company, goes off a cliff, Columbo then jumps on the idea that there must have been an exploding cigar box --- presumably due to the fact that when Columbo gets called into the case, he hears a telephone recording made during the car ride (something technologically rare for the early 1970s), which captures conversation from Buckner about opening up a new cigar box. Okay.... a little bit of a reach, but at least he does know that parts of the car were burned before going over the cliff.

Now the villain, Roger Standford played by (the always weird and interesting) Roddy MacDowell, is a PhD Chemist who did wire-up a cigar box to explode, and planted it in the car with Buckner and his private investigator Quincy. But here's the problem: since this cigar box plot actually succeeded, and the car did explode and burn causing it to destruct and go down the cliff, then one would normally conclude that Roger would KNOW that the cigar box itself would not be a recoverable item from the accident, or even if it had...it would be blown away into in tatters, and most importantly already detonated.

So when Columbo traps Roger, by showing him a "recovered cigar box" at the end of the movie, it is not believable to me that Roger would ever fall for that setup so easily, and freak out like he does -- and where he then incriminates himself in front of Columbo.

He's a chemist. He knew the box worked, and that the car was blown-up. Roger, like Columbo, had also heard the telephone recording where Buckner was starting to open up the box during the ride. Consequently, even if the police thought it was just an accident, Roger knew the truth. Therefore, he would also know that any "slightly burned" yet in-tact, whole cigar box presented by Columbo, which Columbo claimed to have been recovered, had to be a fake or planted box -- and not the actual cigar box that really blew-up the car. He would've have also known that even if the cigar box somehow survived the explosion in tact (impossible?), that it could not also detonate a second time.

But Columbo traps his man here anyway, with a planted cigar box that he claims survived the accident, and then Roger freaks-out thinking that it is going to explode on the tram ride (with Columbo) as he opens it, and then incriminates himself.

I found that not believable.

The odds of the car having a completely separate and naturally-occurring accident right at the same time as the lethal cigar box was opened in the car is: 1,000,000,0000,0000 to 1.

So someone who was a conniving PhD genius in Chemistry would also be smart enough to know that the cigar box had to have worked, and that once the real cigar box had indeed worked as planned --- then even if it were "recovered", it would not detonate again, and so this 'recovered' box had to be just a police gimmick, which was completely harmless.

So the writing/plot is simply not believable here.

But the acting performances are fine.

This is really not a bad episode. It's a more complicated murder than normal, and a lot of things have to happen in order for it to work. But it does and Columbo is on the case. What I did not like about the episode is the villain. He is annoying to put it bluntly. He laughs too much and it's too hard laugh to hear so often. And he laughs A lot. Columbo is a little out of his element at a chemical factory, but he holds his own. The final scene is what saves the episode. It's sheer brilliance to set up the murderer like he does, however, I felt Columbo put his own life in danger by setting him up where he did with a wide open door. What is the villain had decided he had nothing to lose by throwing Columbo out of the cart? Overall it is not the worst Columbo by any means. If you can get past the annoying villain, you may enjoy it. But the best episodes are the ones where you see Columbo and the bad guy have great interactions and you enjoy seeing them play cat and mouse games with each other. But because the villain was so annoying, it sets it back a little, because I did not enjoy the parts with him in it.

Peter Falk is Columbo, plain and simple. In other words he plays his role here like the icon he soon became. On the other hand, the guest star of the week, Roddy McDowell, went over the top playing Roger Stanford, as an heir to a chemical company who was also eccentrically brilliant.

In order to ascend to the control of his family's company Roger Stanford had to kill his uncle and neutralize his loving aunt. Saddled with a brilliant mind, but a crazed narcissism Roger believed he hatched a perfect accidental death of his uncle. This, actually, mirrors real life mega-millions family struggles, but what pushes this into less than dirty realism is the over-the-top performance by Roddy McDowell as the killer Roger Stanford. McDowell's character is simply too flamboyant and too eccentric. Columbo knew he did it the first time he laid eyes on him and all he had to do was give him the smallest bit of rope to hang himself. Not much tension as one might guess.

This episode had an excellent cast, not the least of which would have to be McDowell. If only the director had used some restraint this would have been extremely compelling one must believe. Roddy McDowell, a life-long thespian, certainly has the skills, but was pushed here to create a character with, roughly, twice the crazed madman persona needed to be a cagey foe for Columbo. How much nicer it would have been if Columbo would have had to actually do some work! Still, all in all, quite an entertaining story if too rote.

I exactly agree with the Bethany Cox review of this episode, and almost gave it the same rating (6/10), but I bumped it to 7/10 for two of the supporting performances: those of Ida Lupino and William Windom. What I didn't care for can be summed up in two words: Roddy McDowell. Unlike the other episodes where it struck me that Peter Falk didn't like working with his guest star, in this one I thought they literally HATED each other. In the extended final scene in the gondola (in which Windom's face really tells the tale), I felt like they were both resisting their urges to strangle one another! Falk managed to win that one as Roddy's uncontrollably maniacal laughter at the end is just wildly over the top. So the episode skates through with a shaky 7/10.

Agreed with previous poster who pointed out the logical flaw in Columbo's trick to catch the killer. It makes no sense that Roger would fall for the trick, since it's more than obvious the cigar box bomb blew up as planned.

I love Roddy McDowell throughout his acting career, but this performance is without a doubt the most annoying, grating character he ever played. It's a chore to stay with him.

But the thing that annoys me the most about this episode is something that's often irked me about Columbo -- the inappropriate use of loud ambient noise. The final scene, set in an aerial tramway, has continuous loud machine noise in the background. What machinery is making the noise? An aerial cable car, as anyone who has ever been in one knows, is a very quiet place. The noise of the hoist machinery is in the terminal stations only. Nuts.