User Reviews

DEBUTING in its initial run as the first episode of PETER GUNN's third season, "The Passenger" proves to be among the best of the series' weekly installments. Neatly constructed as a mini-noir movie, from beginning to end of the half-hour, there is nary a wasted moment.

CREATIVE use of off-beat camera angles and the varying of shots from tight to very tight at the proper moments add a high measure of tension and suspense to what could have otherwise in lesser hands just an also- rant of a story. Surprisingly, this episode was done under the auspices of some young upstart of a Director named Robert Altman.

ADHERING to the series' unwritten penchant for dark, moody scenes; the lighting is properly sparse and placed in strategically advantageous positions so as to magnify the effect and atmosphere of the scenes on a particular set.

OUR STORY……………..A passenger on a public conveyance bus (Hal Smith)* just happens to be looking up at the second floor of a flea-bag hotel being passed, when he witnesses a man shooting a woman dead. The killer looks down and sees the passenger has witnessed the brutal killing. In a panic, the rider tries to report the felony; but the Police cannot find any evidence of such an occurrence at that location.

WITH the killer now stalking him, the witness goes to Mr. Peter Gunn for help. Making use of a band of friendly Hobos (now known as "Homeless Persons"), Mr. Gunn and Lt. Jacoby (Hershel Brnardi) manage to apprehend the culprit just in the nick of time.

WHILE it isn't anything to hold up as a comparison to Classic Hollywood Movie Noir, such as DOUBLE INDEMNITY or OUT OF THE PAST; it isn't really supposed to have such potency. As we said earlier, it's only a Television series episode of a half-hour; but a very good one, indeed.

NOTE: * That's right Schultz, it's the very same Hal Smith who later immortalized his place in Television History as Town Drunk, Otis on THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW.

POODLE SCHNITZ!!

PETER GUNN "The Passenger" 1960

This is first episode from season 3 of the 1958 to 1961 P.I. series, PETER GUNN. Craig Stevens headlines as the hard as nails detective who always dresses with style. Regulars in the series are Hope Emerson as the owner of, MOTHER'S jazz club, and Lola Albright as Stevens' squeeze, Edie Hart, who is the club singer at, MOTHER'S.

A passenger on a bus looks up as the bus passes a cheap downtown hotel. The man, Forest Lewis, sees a woman being strangled in a second floor window. The man calls the Police when he reaches his apt. The Police take a look into the report and find nothing but an empty room. The name on the hotel register is a phony. The Police write off the report as a man seeing things.

Several days later, Lewis contacts our favourite Private Investigator, Peter Gunn. Gunn, (Craig Stevens) meets with Lewis for a chat. Lewis tells Stevens about what he saw. He is now convinced that the man he saw is out to kill him. Stevens agrees to look into the matter. All he has is the vague description Lewis gives him.

Steven pays a call on his Police pal, Herschel Bernardi to see in the cop can help. All the Policeman can tell him is that they looked into the report and found nothing.

The viewer however sees that Lewis is right about someone coming after him. The murderer, the always shady, Ted de Corcia has tracked down Lewis. Lewis is soon found dead in his apartment. This does not sit well with either the Police or Stevens. They both dig further into the killing.

Now a dead woman is found in a nearby junk yard. It would seem that Mister Lewis did indeed see a killing. Stevens has the Police release a story to the newspapers that a hobo living at the junk yard had seen the body being dumped. Now, Stevens and the Police hideout at the junk yard and wait.

Needless to say, Mister de Corisa shows looking for the hobo. Guns are pulled and de Corcia collects a round. He is soon answering questions about the two murders. The first, the woman, had been done in a drunken rage after the girl, a bar room pick-up, had laughed at him. Now we find out that Lewis was not the civic minded fellow he appeared to be. He had been trying to blackmail de Corcia for 10 large. The blackmail attempt backfired. Stevens had only been hired as a sort of insurance policy. It did not work.

An entertaining episode that is better than I am making it sound like. The twist at the end is nicely done.

***SPOILERS*** Coming home from work on the midnight express bus line a sleeping Edward Hines, Forrest Lewis, awakes just in time to see a murder being committed in a room at the nearby hotel. Doing his civic duty to inform the police of the crime he gets no cooperation from them thinking that he dreamed the whole thing up. It's when Hines gets in touch with private detective and star of the show Peter Gunn, Craig Stevens, that things start to get a bit sticky for him. Feeling that the killer Curtis Brantd, Ted de Corsia, spotted him Hines wants Gunn to have him arrested before he gets a chance to knock him off! With Gunn doing everything he can to track down Brandt Hines behind his back starts to blackmail Brandt in a shakedown scheme for $10,000.00 that the holes in his pockets and without a pot to pi** in Brandt doesn't have!

It doesn't take long when Hines becomes Brandt's next victim in him having him keep his mouth shut but Gunn now without a client goes it alone to solve the case Pro Bono or without getting a red cent for doing it! The big brake in the case comes when hobo poet laureate Elmo Barns, Rhys Williams,while giving his fellow hobos in a local junk yard the facts of life as well as theory of quantum physics spots a dead body of a woman, that turned out to be Brandt's first murder victim, pop out of a junked car and reports it to the police. Gunn using Elmo as bait, without him knowing about it, has his police friend Let. Jocoby, Herschel "the Bird" Bernardi, report to the press that Elmo actually saw the killer and can identify him!

***SPOILERS*** Sometimes you've got to do things that aren't exactly kosher and on the up and up which is what our hero Peter Gunn did in putting Elmo in the line of fire with Brandt trying to snuff him out. Being on a roll in having murdered two people and what looked like getting away with his crimes Brandt hit a brick wall here. With him coming out in the open and into a police trap set up for him by Gunn & Jacoby! And what was the reason that Brandt strangled his first victim, a hooker, that eventually lead to all this! She didn't care too much for both his love making and table manners!