Private Detective Joe Dancer (Robert Blake) accepts a case for Tiffany Farinpour (JoBeth Williams), the daughter of a powerful California family who wants to tell her missing brother David that he was right for leaving the family. Naturally, Dancer locates the young man and David is shot dead within minutes. Can you guess where this one is going? This was the pilot of a prospective detective series Blake did for NBC and obviously a chance for him to jump start his career post-BARETTA. It didn't work. By the time of the early 80s, most of the detective stuff used here had become cliché. In fact, this almost feels like a POLICE SQUAD parody at times with the voice overs and lines like, "I kept finding out more and didn't like what I was finding" and "Quit dancing around Dancer!"
The film is interesting for two reasons though. First, you have a great cast that includes the aforementioned Williams, Veronica Cartwright, Wilford Brimley, James Gammon, Kenneth Tigar, Carol Wayne, and Bubba Smith. Second, the wealthy family's big secret (granddad got rich by dealing with the Nazis in the late 30s and they fear it will ruin the son's bid for the California Governorship and White House) is culled from a prominent, real life political family and it looks like that skeleton didn't harm them too much. Of course, they didn't have Joe Dancer on their case!
The film is interesting for two reasons though. First, you have a great cast that includes the aforementioned Williams, Veronica Cartwright, Wilford Brimley, James Gammon, Kenneth Tigar, Carol Wayne, and Bubba Smith. Second, the wealthy family's big secret (granddad got rich by dealing with the Nazis in the late 30s and they fear it will ruin the son's bid for the California Governorship and White House) is culled from a prominent, real life political family and it looks like that skeleton didn't harm them too much. Of course, they didn't have Joe Dancer on their case!