User Reviews

If you choose to disagree with this review, that's fine -- but watch the show first. The ending is the worst, but the show is a dead turkey from the very start. As the opening credits roll, a woman (Phyllis Davis, seen only from the knees down) gets dressed while spewing insults at the man she slept with. Meanwhile, that self-same man is in the next room sharpening a large butcher knife. (The only time we see Davis's face is for about a second when she sees him and the knife.) Not only is this a ripoff of the hideous ending to Looking for Mr. Goodbar, it's also unbelievable that she wouldn't hear him sharpening the knife. Then he sticks her, unconscious, in a garbage bag and lugs her out to his car to place her in the trunk. (This sequence isn't seen but it's hard to imagine anybody NOT noticing.) When Bill Crowley sees the car and the driver Hollis (Edward Winter, playing it like he REALLY needs the paycheck) and sees Hollis sweating like a pig (the dialog says it's over 100 degrees at the time, but that doesn't sound very convincing), he flashes his badge, pulls the car over and finds the woman in the trunk. But since Crowley had no probable cause to search the vehicle (Don "Red" Barry, as his boss, seems to want to rip Crowley's head from his shoulders while reminding him, and is in a fury every time we see him), the assailant gets a free pass when the woman dies without identifying him. Given Hollis' behavior during the entire hour, you'd think he was wearing a sign saying "Serial Killer" for even a passer-by to see and would have been caught long before this incident. Pepper then dogs Hollis, his wife Amy and his girlfriend (barbara McNair) through the show. The chase sequence starts when Amy finally admits to Hollis's abusive behavior -- whereupon Hollis turns up, holding a huge butcher knife, and reciting a bad variation on a children's rhyme. And what does Pepper do? Pull out her gun and blast him? Use her martial-arts training on him? Pick up something and throw it at him, at least? No, no and no. Both women run like Playboy bunnies through the house and into a garden. When they temporarily hide in a little shed and Hollis breaks into it with a croquet mallet, Pepper smashes a flower pot over his head! And then she peeks out to see if he's down -- and of course he isn't, grabbing her around the neck and picking up the knife again. Fortunately Crowley, Royster and Stiles arrive at that point -- and then Hollis goes blank and mumbles something while laughing incoherently. To make things worse, there is a swimming pool nearby -- and, using an old dictum of the stage, Hollis has to fall into it. But since nobody is nearby, he simply walks to the edge and steps into thin air to make his dive! What might have been a really creepy show is just really sick.