Reviews

Kimble has found a job caring for an accident victim (Robert Duvall) in a Santa Monica pier shop. Duvall's sister is the gorgeous Angie Dickenson (Norma) who wants her brother dead so she can run away from the day to day boredom of the pier. Her enabler in the plot to kill her brother is John Ericson, as Lars.

Along comes a truly decent man, Kimble, who wants to help Leslie get back to a normal life thru therapy. Norma seduces Kimble and thinks she can manipulate him into murder. However even though he feels something for her there is no way he will be complacent in murder.

This is one of the best noirs of the Fugitive. The ending scenes with Kimble hiding on the running merry go round is reminiscent of the final scene in Hitchcock's Stranger on a Train. As the music plays and it reels around and around he jumps off and goes to Norma's apartment to hide.

She tells him she loves him but turns him in to the police anyway saying she will lose him one way or the other. A change of heart on her part, she tells the police it was her and Lars who murdered her brother.

Kimble wants to think he can find a decent person for a brief rendezvous, but this is an example of his loneliness taking over his common sense.

The heat between him and Angie Dickenson makes a very believable trap for the always hopeful fugitive.

I have always wondered if that surprise kiss in the last act was scripted. It certainly does seem that it.

This is an important episode in the saga of the wrongly accused fugitive. We see all the background about the Kimble's loss of a child and subsequent toll it took on his marriage. There are many backstories about the murder and the trial, shown thru glimpses of Kimble's memory of the events.

He is on the side of the road, darkened by night, when a distraught young woman veers into him. He is injured and transported to the hospital where she stays with him until he wakes up and tells the investigators that he stepped out into the road. The girl is cleared and amazed by the story. When she asked him why he tells her it is his business. Feeling guilty she tells him he can come and stay with her while he recovers.

The two companions are now able to tell their various stories, his of an injustice and her about a broken relationship with a married man. He tells her you have to step off the sidewalk to let all the lonely people pass by, and most are not married.

While he is resting he hears some talking in the other room and walks in on the married man trying to convince the girl (Pamela Tiffin) that he loves her. He presents himself as the big brother and the suitor leaves. From that moment on he is her mentor and protector.

He likes this girl more than he should, and decides to take her to the married man's house so she can see the real story and walk away. The door opens and there he is the host of many friends at a house party. He tries to stop them from entering and here we see, for probably the first time Kimble's temper. He says to the married man, that he will knock him into his wall to wall carpeting if he tries to keep them out.

She discovers in those moments that all was a lie and is able to walk away. Kimble must now leave and we see another moment that is rare. He asks the girl to remember him and that someday when he returns she will be there with her hubby and two kids.

The sweetest moment is when Kimble thanks her for running him down and she says it was all her pleasure. A wonderful sweet story.

Kimble has found some peace by assimilating himself for a time among migrant workers. A friendly family found him ill and helped him back to health so he could labor in the fields. John McIntire, Jeanette Noland and Bonnie Beecher round out the cast in this extraordinary episode.

Kimble knows it is time to move on when the daughter Kate becomes enamored of him and the previous boyfriend, a song maker starts to bring his lyrics too close to the fugitive. And so he bids farewell to jump a freight train. In the meantime Gerard has seen his photo in an news article about the workers and heads right out for him near the Gulf of Mexico. He confronts Kelly (John McIntire) and threatens to put him in jail if he does not disclose where Kimble is. He relents and Gerard captures Kimble yet again.

A hurricane forces Gerard to take shelter with Kimble among the same families of migrant workers. There is a sick child which Kimble helps, and then a roof collapse injures Gerard, making Kimble save his life once again. This is a familiar storyline, as Kimble has saved Gerard many times with no gratitude from the cop. In retrospect I think Gerard was jealous of Kimble's ability to engage normal people to help him out of tight spots. They all wind up hating Gerard because he is so obsessed with the capture.

Once the storm blows over Kimble must be on his way with Gerald limping and crawling as Kimble escapes with the help of the other workers. All in all the best thing about this episode is the back and forth between Kimble and Gerard. No give, and again an ill wind blows no good.

What a spectacular episode. We find Dr. Kimble so beaten down and desperate as he walks to his job during a torrential rain storm. His lack of food and lodging has him making mistakes by signing into the job as Richard Kimble not Steve Carver the name of the day. The police are waiting when a co-worker warns him off the job. He hitches a ride, and then sneaks onto a bus that has stopped because of weather, and there meets another desperate wanderer, Mrs. Philip Gerard. Neither person knows the other and when the bus has an accident on a closed road, Marie Gerard is blinded.

She has left her husband after he stops their vacation to again chase Kimble on a hunch. She is running not from the police but from a life that holds a triangle with Kimble, Marie Gerard, and Philip Gerard. Two world weary travelers wind up together, with Kimble trying to get her to a hospital for treatment, interrupted by some thugs stopping on the road. They wind up in a deserted town evacuated in case of flooding. And so the two companions share a bottle of wine in a closed cafe and talk about their mutual small town life's. During the talks Marie realizes she is with Dr. Kimble, after he relates stories about the start of his marriage with Helen. The stories reveal such sweet memories that cross his face with not just young love but a bit of sadness.

She tries everything, including coming on to him to make him stay after hearing the ambulance coming down the road. He tells her that he knows who she is, makes sure she gets help and escapes again.

Gerard has a heart to heart talk with her at the hospital telling her she is the only thing that Kimble has not touched in his life, unknowingly saying they will talk later.

David Janssen again proves the exceptional actor he was, and of course Barbara Rush is wonderful as Marie Gerard. The best of the best.

City in Fear is a really good made for television movie. David Janssen again makes his mark with the role of an alcoholic journalist hired by Robert Vaughn to revive a dying newspaper. Janssens performance is nothing short of a delve into the darkness of the mind of a serial killer (Mickey Rourke) in his premier performance.

Janssen needs the money, owes everyone and everybody including the IRS. His column gets him a dark night visit from the killer. When he realizes he is now the target of this killer, his demeanor when confronted is brilliant. Fear crosses his tired, over indulged face like a lightening strike.

You feel for this man. He is looking for a big score and this could be just the path to the money.

Ultimately the killer is subdued and killed by the police, making any path to the money disappear in a puff of gunsmoke. Janssen was a great actor with so much more to offer. Each part enhanced the actors place as a legend. His parts in many films and tv shows, were really part of his real life drama. Don't miss this movie if you can find a copy.

This is really a character study of a broken man. His world has collapsed and he has dealt with it in the only way he thinks he can. He is running from the police after shooting his wife's lover. David Janssen was a master of pathos in many parts and this is no exception. He needs to get out of town and the flights are all cancelled so he grabs a cab. Yaphet Kotto as the cabbie, is the perfect choice to off set Janssen's beaten man. He wants a drink and since the bars are all closed Kotto takes him home, and then starts the unlikely relationship between the two men. There are too many wonderful scenes to speak of here, but one in particular is the beach scene where Janssen shoots at a beer can and tells Kotto to remember that meaning it could be him next. There is a deep sadness between the two men, one running, the other trying to help him give up. Friendship, empathy and finally an understanding as Janssen stops running. Reminiscent of the Fugitive, there was no better actor they could have chosen for this part.

The final episode of The Fugitive finds Kimble working with Gerard to get the one armed man to confess. My theory on Gerard was that he never really thought that Kimble was guilty, but in order to keep his unending pursuit going, at the risk of his own family and sanity, he had to make it true.

Kimble was an unwitting victim of the justice system which only saw him as the protagonist in a troubled marriage. We all wanted him to be exonerated and found to be the truth finder in this bizarre journey. It was shocking to find that the neighbor had seen everything and froze during the killing with Helen Kimble begging for his help. The worst thing was that he let Kimble run and run to escape a death sentence.

The final scene with Kimble being kicked and stepped on when he tries to climb onto the platform is reminiscent of all the running, the beatings, the gunshots during his travels. Finally Gerard kills the real killer and the neighbor stands up and says he will testify that he saw Fred Johnson kill Helen Kimble.

All in all a fine send off to a remarkable journey of four years. My only objection was that Diane Baker winds up with Kimble. They just did not have the same chemistry as Janssen with Suzanne Pleshette. I thought they should have worked it so she was the final choice and helper. Also the use of color for the fourth season took a lot of the noir feel away from the Fugitive. The dark rooms, corners and bleak surroundings were essential to the plight of Dr. Kimble.

This episode of The Fugitive is particular favorite of mine. Suzanne Pleshette plays Ellie Burnett, the daughter of Dr. Kimble's defense attorney. She has been in love with him for years and the lawyer hired by her deceased father to find the one-armed man is sure he has found him. Ellie runs a personal ad in several out of town papers to have Kimble get in touch with her.

He does and then Ellie lies about the man being found dead a day earlier. He of course is devastated. But her love for him is so strong that she wants to run away with him to Brazil, and have him forget the man ever existed. In the end she owns up to the deceit and tells him the truth sending him out into the night to continue the search.

David Janssen and Suzanne Pleshette were in love and embroiled in a affair at the time of the filming. He refused to divorce his wife and Pleshette ended the affair. She had said he was the "Great love of my life." So when you see the interaction between them on the screen that is not play acting it is real life.

David Janssen as a seasoned, gruff detective with not much time or interest in finding out what happened to a elderly priest on the Golden Gate Bridge. As time rolls around and around he is accompanied by a young nun that does not believe that the priest jumped. This is really a budding love story between the two people. It is certainly a mystery and Janssen is wonderful in this part, eventually finding that there was a phantom creeping around pushing people off the bridge. I don't think that Janssen every got the admiration he deserved for his obvious ability to make people feel they wanted to help him be a better man. You still see the same vulnerability in his face and in his demeanor. As far as how people said he aged in this movie, I like him at this age. There is something so attractive about him here that you can believe that women of all ages would fall in love with him. A must watch for Janssen fans.