Fri 21 Jun 2013
A TV Review by Mike Tooney: IRONSIDE “The Monster of Comus Towers” (1967).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[24] Comments
“The Monster of Comus Towers.” From the Ironside TV series. Season 1, Episode 10 (of 196 total). First telecast: 16 November 1967. Regular cast: Raymond Burr (Ironside), Don Galloway (Det. Sgt. Ed Brown), Barbara Anderson (Officer Eve Whitfield), and Don Mitchell (Mark Sanger). Guest cast: Warren Stevens, David Hartman, Joan Huntington, Michael Forest, Donald Buka, Kevin Hagen, Evi Marandi, Renzo Cesana, Harper Flaherty. Teleplay: A. J. Russell and Stanford Whitmore. Story: A. J. Russell. Director: Don Weis (58 Ironside episodes to his credit).
Most long-running crime dramas seem to find it impossible to produce genuine whodunnits on a regular basis (it does require thinking a lot), so the majority of them work on the Encyclopedia Brown level of complexity.
This particular episode, however, is something of an exception to the general rule.
A collection of one-of-a-kind art masterpieces valued at $20 million is being displayed on an upper floor of Comus Towers, headquarters of a computer firm. With alarms still sounding, security guards rush to the art exhibit only to find another guard with a knife sticking out of him and the head of security lying on the floor nearby, unconscious and wounded.
The 6-foot-long, 40-pound centerpiece of a triptych has apparently been spirited out of the high-rise through a smashed plate glass window by someone who can either fly in gale force winds or shinny up the side of a tall building while wearing tennis shoes.
When Ironside & Co. are called in, the chief has no shortage of suspects, some more obvious than others: the wealthy owner of Comus Towers, the self-assured head of security (no one is above suspicion to Ironside), the bespectacled art insurance expert, the cool female employee of the firm, the two-timing ex-con she’s having an affair with, the Italian sponsor of the art exhibit who’s hard up for money, and his abnormally nervous young wife.
The sponsor, however, soon eliminates himself from the suspect list by literally dropping dead from cyanide poisoning, leaving Ironside with two murders to solve.
In Golden Age detective fiction style, the chief gets proactive, gathers all the remaining suspects together, and sets a trap according to the old adage of divide and conquer.
You can watch “The Monster of Comus Towers” along with lots of annoying commercials on Hulu here.
June 21st, 2013 at 10:00 pm
It is hard to believe, but I was looking on IMDB for some other information about the series, and I discovered that it was on for eight seasons. Eight.
Which is about five seasons more than I would have guessed.
The reason for this is probably very simple. I don’t remember watching this series very often, and for the life of me, I can’t tell you why.
I’ve always been a big Raymond Burr fan, and I like detective shows, but I barely remember this one. So what happened? I think that at the time there were so many good cop and PI shows on that I took them for granted.
What I think now is that I need this series on DVD, that’s what I think. Three seasons are out and available, I believe, unless someone has an update.
June 21st, 2013 at 11:20 pm
Don Weis, the director of this episode and many more, was a friend. One evening in Santa Fe with Don and Rebecca, Claude asked: “Don, who was the best actor you ever directed?” Don answered: “Alan Alda was the best actor, but Raymond Burr the best reader.” And, I think everyone liked Burr. The public and his colleagues.
June 22nd, 2013 at 1:25 am
I remember this show well. It aired on German TV from 1969 onwards.
Although it was not one of my favorites, I used to watch it, as it seemed OK, and there were not that many choices on 5 TV programs, at the max .
Only with the beginning of private TV in the late 80s, satelite TV started .
The Doc
June 22nd, 2013 at 4:57 am
Interestingly, although I watched the show as a kid, it was never one of those that was a ‘gotta see!’ However, when a satellite channel started repeating the show from the very beginning a few years ago I became a real fan. Very good cast, and the quality of the stories remained surprisingly high for weekly television of the period. Some of the episodes present a fascinating time capsule of the period (Martin Sheen as a professional hit-man using the ‘underground railway’ for draft dodgers in order to escape to Canada). The only ones that really don’t work are the social conscience episodes. Some of these are unintentionally hilarious, especially when you have a show about Native American rights with white actors in ethnic makeup playing NA roles…
June 22nd, 2013 at 6:16 am
We did watch it faithfully from start to finish. We have one DVD, The Best of Season 1, including the pilot episode.
June 22nd, 2013 at 11:25 am
Ironside just started running in our area, Canton,Ohio, a few weeks ago on MeTV. It follows Perry Mason so you get a double dose of Raymond Burr.
June 22nd, 2013 at 8:14 pm
Thanks, Chuck. I’ll check it out. I think we get MeTV on our cable system, though I’ve never watched it. (If I’m not watching a baseball game, I’m watching TCM or a DVD.)
June 22nd, 2013 at 9:52 pm
Steve, I think that you would enjoy watching MeTV. They have several of the old favorites on everyday including Hawaii Five O, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Big Valley, Dragnet, Emergency and Adam-12. In addition there are several comedies from that era.
June 23rd, 2013 at 6:13 pm
My local cable TV provider does carry MeTV (Ch 75), and this is the first I’d heard of it. Cox used to announce new additions to their lineup with a lot of fanfare, but they don’t bother any more. Looks like most of the MeTV broadcast day is a waste (infomercials and the like) but I’ve set the DVR to record a couple of upcoming shows — such as IRONSIDE, STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO and I forget what else. Thanks, Chuck!
June 22nd, 2013 at 11:25 pm
This coming fall IRONSIDE returns with Blair Underwood.
http://www.nbc.com/ironside
June 23rd, 2013 at 12:31 am
Wow, Chuck, that MeTV sounds like some network, alright !
The Doc
June 23rd, 2013 at 5:19 am
Michael, I saw that. And people say Hollywood has no originality. Nonsense!
June 23rd, 2013 at 7:29 pm
Steve, I don’t get any infomercials on MeTV just old shows. This is the lineup of shows starting tonight at 10:00. Thriller (2 episodes), The Fugitive, Naked City, Peter Gunn, Mr. Lucky, Route 66 and The Saint. Columbo is on right now.
June 23rd, 2013 at 11:21 pm
Very strange! I get ads for treadmills and floor waxers, and you get Good Stuff.
June 24th, 2013 at 8:47 am
The new “Ironside,” with Blair Underwood in the role made famous by Burr, is set in NY rather than SF. The creator is a man named Michael Caleo, who was a story editor on “The Sopranos” for what seems to have been a very short time. He also wrote the screenplay to the upcoming De Niro film “The Family.”
June 24th, 2013 at 8:50 am
Steve, that is very strange. Maybe different areas of the country carry different programs and sell advertising. There are no advertisements at all in my aera.
June 24th, 2013 at 10:02 am
Greetings from Chicago, the Cradle of MeTV.
Brief history:
MeTV began as an overnight function of WCIU-ch26, an independent station here.
The station manager was getting bored with infomercials and thought vintage reruns might attract a better class of insomniac.
MeTV caugt on in Chicago, and the management rewarded it with its own low-power channel, ch23.
Over time, MeTV grew in popularity, and the management got another LP station, ch48, and started MeTOO.
All the while, the management (Weigel Broadcasting) bought up more and more vintage shows, rotating them in and out of the two stations.
When digital conversion came in, Weigel began a third station, THiS, specializing in movies.
The Me’s and THis and the U’s (the original station and its digital spinoff, U2) got national notice ,and soon Weigel found themselves with a potential network on their hands.
And that brings us to the many outlanders who are starting to get MeTV in their towns.
But apparently … not all of Me.
Some cities seem to be taking some of the lineup but not all of it; some of those infomercials must have long leases on the overnight slots.
Back here in Chicagoland, I’m afraid there’s little we can do about that.
As with the old networks, the local affiliates hold their own pursestrings.
To be honest here’s what I (and many other Chicagoans) wonder:
How many of the outlanders are getting Svengoolie?
(Recorded gag answer:
“They watch it, but they don’t get it!”)
Ironside on DVD:
First two seasons are available fron Shout Factory in the regular way.
Next two seasons are available, also fron Shout Factory, as MOD-DVDs.
Last four seasons – pending.
Meanwhile, for MeTV watchers:
Watch for a season Two episode titled “I, The People”, guest starring Milton Berle (and co-written by him).
See if the character Berle plays reminds you of anyone …
June 24th, 2013 at 12:11 pm
Mike, thanks for the history of MeTV. I guess that I am lucky that we only get vintage shows and not the infomercials. I enjoy watching Svengoolie.
June 24th, 2013 at 6:13 pm
Here in Minnesota I watch METV (the initials stand for “Memorable Entertainment TV”) on broadcast TV. When everything went digital a few stations added secondary programming and one of ours has 5 or 6 extra channels. I’ve never had cable.
June 24th, 2013 at 6:50 pm
I sometimes watch “Svengoolie”
June 24th, 2013 at 10:15 pm
The show I forgot I taped (back in Comment #12) was an episode of AMOS BURKE, SECRET AGENT.
I turned it off after ten minutes.
The title of the episode was “Deadlier Than the Male,” one of the ones Michael Shonk was unable to watch and report back on in his review of the series, found here:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=17089
July 2nd, 2013 at 10:08 am
Of course, the big question with the new “Ironside” series is, who will the traitor be?
In the original series, the people responsible for putting Ironside in a wheelchair were caught in the first episode, and never mentioned again. That, obviously, is not a possibility for a modern TV series. No, we may assume thatnow the order for his assassination will be given by a mysterious cabal, and Ironside’s pursuit of them will be a running plot line through the series. We may further assume that the final episode of the first season will end with the revelation that one of Ironside’s team is a member of that cabal. We may assume this, because not doing this would be unthinkable to any current television writer.
So, the only question is, who will be the traitor. Ed is the most likely suspect, but I would not rule out Eve–or is this version using Fran? If it uses both Eve and Fran, then it will definitely be Eve.
July 2nd, 2013 at 6:02 pm
#22. Actually, your version of the new IRONSIDE sound more interesting to me than the old version ever did.
February 23rd, 2014 at 1:55 pm
I watched “Ironside” when I was in high school and liked it a lot. Of course, as a teenager, I didn’t see beyond the story each week. But now that I have been able to watch it as an adult, my appreciation for the characters and the relationships between them is strong. Raymond Burr delivered a powerful and believable performance as Robert T. Ironside. You see him in the wheelchair, but he portrays a strong character that rises above the disability. He inspires me. In spite of his irascible behavior toward people, particularly his staff, he has a heart of gold. A side that he doesn’t want people to know. As Ironside, he surrounds himself with people whom he can trust and depend on to help him. His reward is fierce loyalty and friendships from his team. The strong bond that they all share forms a “family”, with Ironside as the mentor/father figure. I have seen it the most with Mark Sanger, who hated the Chief when they first met, but grew to love and respect the Chief, and received the same in return. I have not been affected as much by a TV series as I have with “Ironside”.