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All I know of MANNIX is that it's Cliff Booth's favorite TV show in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (a film, though, which is not Phelps' favorite).
Also, who is the twirling girl in the opening credits? Was that scene ever in an actual episode?
Wait, I've seen OUTH twice. I LOVED it and would watch it every night if Mr. Birri permitted it. It is chock-full of pop culture candy, but I missed this bon-bon. In what scene does Cliff profess his love for MANNIX!? Any film that shows love for that show and brings back Paul Revere and the Raiders is aces! As an aside, Mr. Birri and I eagerly await the TV show that will someday be Bounty Law!
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How many times did Woodrow Parfrey show up on Mannix as an informant based in either a hovel of an office or rundown studio, and heavily boozing in both?
Under makeup, Parfrey was one of the ape judges in "Planet Of The Apes".
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Posted: |
Sep 20, 2024 - 3:08 AM
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By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
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It's time for me to talk about Mannix and the always-timely issue which "impacts" [corporate media term] our society: the private investigator being unjustly locked up in an insane asylum (a term which the FSM Board brought back into widespread use).
But first we have to talk about James Scott Rockford, that most worthy successor to Joe Mannix.
The other day I watched The Rockford Files episode The Competitive Edge (S04 E19). For whatever bizarre reason, I have no memory whatsoever of having seen this one! This despite having owned the DVDs for years. In it, Jim ends up locked up in an insane asylum straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which won the Best Picture Oscar two years prior to this episode airing. It's a good episode with an outstanding cast, with James Garner's brother Jack in what has to be his finest role: A cigar-chomping, sunglasses-wearing small-town policeman who would have been right at home guarding Cool Hand Luke!
While not insane asylums, there are a number of TV shows in which the hero is locked up in a windowless white room, drugged, brainwashed, or otherwise driven to the edge of madness. Mannix had a great S8 episode A Word Called Courage. which guest starred the great Anthony Zerbe and was directed by the great Bill Bixby. It also co-starred Bixby's wife, the tragic Brenda Benet.
Mission: Impossible had Mindbend from S6. Barney Collier is imprisoned, brainwashed, and programmed to kill. The episode is a fine one, though there are a few unintentionally amusing moments. The first is in the opening, when a programmed killer starts shooting on a crowded L.A. street, yet none of the background extras breaks their stride or even looks to what is happening! L.A. is one disinterested town! There's also a bit in which Jim Phelps is undercover in a laundry truck. The truck has a sign on it, but said vehicle passes by the street sign of the actual name of the business. Still, a fine episode.
Simon & Simon had S3's The Skeleton Who Came Out of the Closet, in which AJ Simon is tortured by a sinister doctor played by Dean Stockwell.
Joe Mannix was in good company with his fellow TV legends.
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Posted: |
Sep 22, 2024 - 3:51 AM
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By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
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Mannix: The Man Who Wasn’t There (S6 Ep 16)
Lyle Foster (Clu Gulager) is another of Joe’s Korean War POW “colleagues” who tries to kill him. Sure, this plot has been done numerous times, but director Sutton Roley has every scene—they really feel like setpieces—blocked and lit in his typically interesting way. I particularly enjoyed the silhouette of Gulager in his motel room as he menacingly cackles at Joe over the phone.
The first quarter of the episode is effectively eerie, as Mannix tries to determine who is stalking him. The music score is probably reused from other episodes, but a superb cue heard in a scene in Joe’s office sounds like Schifrin.
There’s a decent fight in a nautically-themed restaurant. In this scene, Arthur Batanides resembles his character actor counterpart Richard “Carmine Ricca” Devon. Curse those early ‘70s sideburns and pasted comb overs.
This episode has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cameo by Ken Lynch. Robert Middleton has a standout performance. Middleton plays Jake Coryell, a hefty organized crime figure getting a workout at the gym.
Mannix has a good line when remembering his time spent in a North Korean POW camp: “We sort of sat around watching hell freeze over.”
The POW camp scene is blurrily yet strikingly shot in white and icy-blue with what appears to be some sort of snowfall effect. North Korean brutality is shown—unlike on episodes of M*A*S*H—as Joe gets smashed with a rifle butt.
Foster is not mentioned as having been in Mannix’s platoon, so it’s unclear as to whether Foster and he met in the camp. Mannix, however, is a “Screw continuity!” show, so it doesn’t matter. The finale and Foster’s demise are a little disappointing, but the highly-entertaining journey makes up for it.
My Rating 10/10
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Posted: |
Sep 28, 2024 - 2:34 PM
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By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
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What is the zeitgeist of today? I know I’ve droned on about this before, but this is part of what made Joe Mannix special:
Joe Mannix was the private investigator who represented the "Silent Majority" during the tumultuous late Sixties and early Seventies. He reflected their beliefs, concerns, and embodied what the "Greatest Generation" hoped to be. Joe walked the straight and narrow in that he worked closely with the police, never broke the law, yet had a fierce sense of independence, which was something that used to be commonplace in the American character. Mannix also saw the counterculture in a balanced, if not completely sympathetic way.
In 2012, there was a movie of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. In 1998, there was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The former did not resonate at all, not even as an exercise in nostalgia. It didn’t have anything to do with the time in which it was made. Timeless concepts are essential to art but so is being representative of the time in which it is created.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, while a cult hit (I even have the Criterion DVD), in no way connects to anything in 1998 or now. It may work as a sentimental journey (trip?) for those who claim to have “been there” circa 1971.
What would today’s Joe Mannix represent? Hollywood today has only one point of view, so there wouldn't be any room for someone like Joe Mannix to comment on views with which his audience might agree.
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