User Reviews

This is more my kind of Charlie's Angels episode. It contains perhaps a serial killer (the reason quite a doozy) who uses "poisonous chloroform" to kill dancers at a club called *Felines* who are about to participate in a nude shoot for a magazine of the owner of said club, Tony Mann (Hugh O'Brian; Mann a man in his 40s who is notorious for not dating women over 19!). Suspects include Mann's long-time business partner, Dave Erhard (Alan Fudge), concerned with the money being lost in the club, and "bouncer/wrangler" Danny (Richard Foronjy), known for coming on to some of the girls a little strong, promising them an easier way to success if he is "accommodated". Paula (Jan Shutan) is the older woman (still quite lovely, but the competitive environment of the younger girls out to gain the coveted prestige of fame, Paula is a "casualty of age") who helps "guide" the girls in Mann's club. Because Mann is a pal of Charles', the Angels are asked to go undercover to find the chloroform killer. Sabrina (Kate Jackson) will pose as Mann's "old friend", staying at his palatial estate until the killer is unearthed, while Jill (Farrah Fawcett) draws the shortest straw between the three Angels and must work at the Felines club, her life certain to be in danger. An "explosive" tennis ball and two chloroform assaults (one while Jill is sleep in bed asleep) will threaten Jill's life. Jill still agrees to pose for the upcoming Felines magazine—a no-no considering the killer's modus operandi is that the other victims also planned to model for this particular magazine, resulting in their chloroform murders. Erhard is just *too suspect* while Danny, obviously a pig, is too blatant a red herring. I think the identity of the killer will be easy for some to figure out…it's always that one "too nice" and seemingly cherubic. Fawcett in a "feline" outfit (the one all the girls wear in the club) is worth seeing the episode alone, but we also get a man thrown from a scaffold when an attempt to kill Kelly (Jaclyn Smith) goes awry (not bad little suspense sequence to boot), as well as, a dandy reason for why the killer is targeting pretty girls which includes a wig (!), the polarizing topic of the importance of youth and beauty in the world of glamor and fame established in "Lady Killer" very early when a flame of Mann's insults Sabrina, using age as a weapon against her (Kate, so beautiful, can only stand there stunned at the audacity of this unpleasant wench, quite territorial in regards to her man, Mann, and the idea of losing him to someone "much" older). There are some great lines of dialogue in this episode, lighthearted jabs at the modeling industry (although there is indeed a dramatic indictment of how some are mistreated because of the harshness such an industry entails), along with a look at the rude, crude clientèle that frequent a club like Felines.

Despite the usual moments of pure incredulity associated with every CA episode, Lady Killer was an enjoyable yarn. It starts off with a murder at the Feline Club, an obvious stand-in for Hugh Hefner's Playboy Club. The victim is a waitress who plans on posing for the club's namesake magazine, Feline. The character is played by Martha Smith, a real life playmate and co-star in the film Animal House.

She's killed in what can only be called typical 70's slasher film fashion. After working the last shift, she's in the changing room with the other waitresses. They exit for the night leaving her alone. She hears a noise, turns around to ask if anyone's there (killers never answer for some reason), and then turns back toward her locker and is immediately chloroformed from behind. Her hair is cut off and she dies from chloroform poisoning.

The head of the Feline empire, Tony Mann (played by Hugh O'Brian and extremely well cast) hires the Angels to investigate not just this murder, but an identical one at the club a month earlier. You'd think such a tawdry killing spree would make national headlines, or the Feline club would be shuttered until the killer was found, but then how would the Angels crack the case?

Sabrina goes undercover as Tony's new squeeze, Kelly as a nightclub singer (for whom Bosley provides reel to reel lip sync sound), and Jill works as a waitress with potential to be the next centerfold.

First night at the club, two suspects are introduced, Erhard, a dour and sour man who runs the business side of the empire , and Victor, the nightclub manager who hits on every girl at the club. We also meet Paula, played by Jan Shutan (Star Trek's Mira Romaine), who is Mann's adviser/confidant and waitress/centerfold wrangler. A subplot is introduced about a rival lad mag producer named Danny Auletta; think of a cruder, louder Bob Guccione, who wants to buy Mann out of his Feline club and magazine. Anyway, Auletta is rude and obnoxious towards staff members so Mann beats up Auletta right there in the club in front of customers and we never see him again.

An early amusing scene at the Mann mansion where Sabrina trades barbs with Mann's soon to be jilted, much younger, bikini-clad lady friend, is well acted, and reinforces the belief that Kate Jackson is the show's best talent, able to play self-effacing comedy with aplomb while keeping her dignity.

A strange and unintentionally funny scene transpires on the mansion's tennis court, where Jill is being photographed swinging a racquet for a clothed pictorial. In broad daylight, in front of close to a dozen witnesses, we see a male hand drop a red (ringer) tennis ball into a tennis ball machine. When the ball makes contact with Jill's racket, the ball explodes, knocking her to the ground. It's honestly one of the funnier things I've seen on this show, an exploding tennis ball. Placed inside the machine in a manner in which it would have been impossible not to have seen who did it. Even funnier is Tony Mann yelling for someone to get Jill a blanket. A nice warm blanket to wrap around her on a hot California day after getting concussed by an exploding Slazenger. Seriously, how bout call for a medic?

Anyway, Kelly does some snooping at Erhard's house and discovers that he had advance knowledge of some scare tactics being used on Feline employees and is probably working for Auletta. Because of course Erhard would leave an incriminating desk calendar lying around his office with dates and times and names, y'know, just in case he was ever investigated for shaking down the man he worked for.

Later, Sabrina discovers the master bedroom at Tony Mann's den of iniquity has been rigged to explode the second someone lays on the bed. It's even more ludicrous than the exploding tennis ball, it seriously looked like an entire effects team would have had to work on it to produce the kind of fireworks the bed shot off (naturally Sabrina had to test it out, almost starting a fire). And the whole fiasco makes it obvious that there's an insider betraying him, while also having knowledge of Apocalypse Now type explosive displays.

It's better not to think about how ham-handed the whole thing is.

Later the Angels (Kelly) try to smoke Erhard out as the killer by pretending to blackmail him with knowledge of his calendar that he left lying around, unless he pays Kelly 100K. He meets her at an abandoned something or another where instead of giving her the money, surprise surprise, he tries to kill her! And inexplicably, Kelly decides to leave her gun behind even though she suspected there would be danger from the get go. But thankfully the other Angels and Bosley are able to provide backup, but not before Kelly accidently sends Erhard over a railing to his (presumed?) death.

Afterwards, Jill is attacked at her Malibu beach home in bed at night, the attacker using the same MO as the killer; a bottle of chloroform and scissors to cut her hair off. But Jill fights the would be killer off and the person flees.

The Angels arrive at the conclusion that while Erhard was trying to force Mann to sell to Auletta by causing commotion and causing Mann to lose money (Erhard's the one who rigged the tennis ball and bed to explode, must have been ex-military, amiright?) he's not the killer.

Which leaves either Victor or.... Paula. It ends up being Paula, who offers Jill the use of her apartment (Jill being scared to sleep in her Malibu home), but it's only so she can try to poison her again. Naturally she fails, but only because the other Angels and Bosley arrive..... wait for it... in the nick of time.

Paula tries to leap to her death but is convinced by Sabrina that people (doctors) can help her. We find out Paula was scarred in a horrible car accident (and lost her hair too) and was jealous of the attention that Tony Mann showed the waitresses and centerfolds, so she killed two of them.

Overall a fun episode, the double perps, guilty of separate crimes, added a nice twist. The episode featured good turns from Hugh O'Brian and Kate Jackson. Hugh's Tony Mann could have been one dimensional but he brought some depth to the character.

Jill's best moment was as a waitress in the Feline club. She's given a hotel key by a horny customer. She keeps smiling and takes the key (with no intention of meeting the man)... Then when she's accosted a second time by another slobbering and horny customer, she gives the hotel key to him and says to meet her after her shift--- but to keep the lights off when she walks in. Guess those two customers were in for a not so great surprise.

Reality followed fiction here as Farah Fawcett did pose for the Playboy front cover in 1978, just two years after this episode aired, and then fully nude for the magazine in 1995.

Although I doubt the fictional Jill Monroe character (played by Farah), or any of the Angels would have approved of soft porn, and Farah's real life antics? They are far too perfect for that.

Or, at least, the Angels always just managed to steer that fine line between being incredibly pretty and sexy and using it to get their way, and joining in on Charlie's sexist comments, but at the same time remaining feminist.

In contrast to the tiny Feline club outfits and bikinis Jill (Farah), and all the young under 20s girls are wearing, Sabrina (Kate Jackson) wears mainly longer skirts and jackets in this episode... So when the Angels and Bosley go to back up Kelly when she puts herself in the dangerous position of doing a blackmail deal in the middle of nowhere with Dave Erhard, not only does Kelly go without her gun, as others have pointed out, but Sabrina has decided that long skirt and heels would be appropriate dress for the occasion, that inevitably includes a footchase. But Sabrina, and all the Angels look great throughout, and that's the most important thing.