The fifty fifth episode of Columbo was titled Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health and was the second episode of the show’s tenth season. A television presenter’s career is threatened by blackmail and he resorts to murder. In this podcast Gerry and Iain look at a returning killer and some nifty video editing.
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Wade Anders (George Hamilton) has caught a lucky break and progressed from a security consultant to host the popular crime solving television show Crime Alert. Unhappy with Anders’ success, Budd Clarke (Peter Haskell) resorts to blackmail, threatening to expose Wade’s past as a pornstar in a movie featuring an under-age actress if he doesn’t resign as host of the show. Unwilling to concede to this skulduggery, Anders plots to murder Clarke and conceal the evidence of his past indiscretion.
There isn’t a large principal cast in this episode, but Penny Johnson Jerald is compelling as producer Maxine Jarrett, while Robert Donner entertains as Arnie, an adult video store proprietor. Rick Najera makes a brief appearance as Henry Santos, complete with a very fetching clipboard.
Daryl Duke was behind the camera for the second of his two Columbo episodes, following Season 9’s Columbo Cries Wolf, working with a story by the mysterious team of Sonia Wolf, Patricia Ford and April Raynell.
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Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health was released in 1991. It is 88 minutes long and originally aired on the ABC network. This episode is not available on Netflix, but can be found on the Season 10 or complete collection DVD box sets from Universal.
