User Reviews

Reasonably fair episode, which generates quite a genuine tension. Jaclyn Smith is doing more than just looking lovely.

This episode is creepy good. Bruce Watson gives a fine performance as a cross dresser.

The Angels are hired to find the psycho who calls women on the phone at the nightclub and kills them because they're pretty. And who is his next victim gonna be? DA DA DONA...That's right it's Kelly.

Jaclyn Smith gives a wonderful performance because when she cries we all cry. The only disappointment is her fashion choices in this one.

Enjoy this one my pretties.

I'm not even going to go into the plot here, except that the setting at the hotline club lends an air of mystery with the dim lights and the telephones lighting up on tables all over the place.

Forget it. This episode is all about the Psycho Tranny dressed up like Big Bird from Sesame Street. Bruce Watson plays his role with campy aplomb. I can't believe how easily Kelly falls apart in this one, though the big reveal at the end did have some genuine tension. This episode came out in 1981, one year after Brian De Palma's terrifying "Dressed to Kill". Margo is like Bobbie's disgruntled little sister. The ending where she is foiled by a mud puddle is the funniest thing that ever showed up on primetime. I was an insecure 11 year old gay boy and was ecstatic to stumble across something like this. Biggest laugh of the year.

Woman is told by creepy man over the phone that he's going to kill her while at some singles club. So what does the woman do? She tells her friend "He said he's gonna kill me. I'm leaving to walk alone to my car in that dark parking lot outside right now!" Unbelievable right? Only it gets worse from there!

When the killer confronts her at her car, (which shocks the idiot) she doesn't try to run or scream, but instead stands there and TELLS him "I'm going to scream." Yeah, just warn him rather than just scream your head off lol. The warning gave him time to cover her mouth but she actually gets away from him---only to be run down by an oncoming car.

I guess this moron was just meant to die that night no matter what. Then 5 minutes later Kelly is at the same club, sitting in the same seat and on the same phone with the same killer who wants her next. It's all so silly and laughable and a far cry from the early seasons.

And you can't help but scratch your head and wonder just what the heck a flaming drag queen is doing hosting a straight singles club scene. It makes no sense because drag queens were only found in gay bars back then. And even more mind boggling, Kelly can't tell it's a drag queen when talking 2 feet away from him in bright lights lol. Some detective she is!! Watch this one for the absurdity because it's that bad.

"Angel on the Line" is sub-par for a Charlie's Angels adventure. The story begins with a pair of single women at a nightclub. In a pre-smartphone era, there's a curious gimmick of all the tables in the nightclub being equipped with telephones, allowing patrons to call one another to express his or her interest. In the case of the two aforementioned ladies, they receive a call from (presumably) a man who makes terrible threats to one of them. Alarmed, the brunette girl who picked up the phone is startled enough to leave; her friend follows, but the pair are soon separated. Then, the brunette is attacked by a mostly unseen man, with the result being that the brunette seemingly runs directly into the path of an oncoming car (it's framed awkwardly, even for television standards). The victim's blond companion hires the Townsend Agency to find out what happened. Kelly takes the lead, accompanying the client to the nightclub. There, (with Kris, Julie, and Bosley mingling in the background) Kelly's table gets another call, from apparently the Killer. In the aftermath, Kelly is unusually alarmed, compared to her usual history. In the meanwhile, there is a drag performer-- though apparently not officially billed as drag-- who does a comedy/singing routine and invites Kelly to be part of a matchmaking contest. Julie and Kris run into dead ends trying to talk up some of the men at the club. Eventually, some more dead ends occur, and Kelly seems to become the Killer's next obsession. After a while, the Client herself leaves town, leaving the rest of the Angels to continue the case. Kelly even gets a threatening call at home. At one point, a man named Ford befriends Kelly, on the premise that he is a freelance reporter who was told of her by the drag performer. Kelly obliges lunch with Ford, but then manages to be told some disturbing news-- again, by telephone, by Bosley and the Angels. There is a final confrontation at the nightclub, where all is revealed, though less thoroughly than you might think. The reveal of the villain, viewed through current cultural lenses, could be seen as transphobic to some degree: A cross-dressing guy who is obsessed with stalking "real" women and harming them. The portrayal of Kelly here is very disappointing. Her behavior during this episode veered more towards their usual, near-helpless clients, and not someone who by this time was a veteran private investigator with police training and self-defense skills. Bosley, Kris and Julie don't get to do much, but their characters aren't outright embarrassed here, at least.

This is a really awful episode although the writer is the same as on many previous episodes so I wonder how it can be so much worse than others. Kelly suddenly becomes a bundle of nerves when receiving a death threat over the phone - despite carrying a gun in her handbag and (by now) having five years of experience as a private detective and dealing with countless murders and villains. Things go from bad to worse because she ends up having lunch with the possible killer and in the middle of lunch receives a phone call from Bosley in the Townsend office warning her that it might be him. She gives her excuses and leaves, but instead of going to the police or the Townsend office (where the other three are really worried about her) she goes to the scene of the initial murder. The phone in her car seems to be broken because she doesn't tell anyone where she is going. The killer of course is there to meet her and when confronting him she forgets all her police training in self defence or disarming somebody with a knife and fights like a sixteen year old girl. The killer comically falls into a puddle trying to escape and then shivers in fear like a scolded dog. For some reason this is the only episode on the blu-ray set which is transferred from video, all the other 109 are transferred from film. Perhaps it's because this episode was so bad that even the makers threw away the film and only a video tape of this abysmal episode remains.