Kojak (TV Series) Eighteen Hours of Fear (1974) User Reviews

Oh, Canada....

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 30 August 2018]

When the story begins, a lady sporting a fake leg cast goes to see her boyfriend. There, it turns out, they open the cast and learn that there are Canadian $20 plates! However, the buyer soon arrives and the lady waits in the other room with one of the two plates. The buyer kills the boyfriend and then takes off after the lady....but she escapes with the plate. Soon, it's a game of cat and mouse as he searches the city for her. As for the lady, she's a criminal and knows that going to the police will land her in prison. Can Kojak catch up to her and the plate before it's too late?

Overall, a very good episode...one well worth watching. However, when you look at the plates, you might notice they are NOT backwards and should be in order to get a proper printing.

The Salesman from Encino

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 27 November 2012]

This episode of Kojak illustrates a time honored maxim that I've always tried to follow, never pass up an opportunity to mind your own business. That's something that Chuck McCann playing a visiting salesman from Encino.

When McCann saved Lynne Marta from Jack Colvin in a hotel bar the poor guy figures he's scored better than he had any right to ever dream. The problem is that Marta has some stolen Canadian plates from their mint and Colvin has just murdered her boyfriend when he tried to hold him up for a bigger share. Marta in fact is the one that smuggled them into the USA in a plaster leg cast ostensibly from skiing. She saw Colvin kill the boyfriend and she has one of the plates.

Two murders later in the 18 hours mentioned in the episode title and poor McCann's become a target.

With a little help on background from the RCMP by phone, Kojak and the Manhattan South Squad are pointed in the right direction.

Chuck McCann whom I remember so well hosting kid's television on a local New York station back in the day is one fine dramatic and comedy actor. Here the accent is on the former and you will believe that McCann should have looked that pretty gift filly in the mouth.

Here are my write-as I-watch comments

[schwa88 · 7/10 · 1 January 2023]

That was supposed to be a New York apartment at the beginning? I think not. Nor later at the roommate's place, AGHH! If only we had that kind of space.

Also, she got a parking space outside? And had so much room in front of her for a quick exit? The parking situation in all the street scenes are absurd! They really needed more work with location experts for this.

Of course there's a seat right next to her at the bar. So much convenience in this episode!

Wait, there is NO WAY roommate girl could think she could run from killer buyer to a pay phone, with a ROTARY DIAL and dial 911 before he caught up with her across the room. That is crazytown.

Really funny how Kojak pronounces "plethora," like those who just learned it. I know cuz that was me also.

That was not the reaction I would have if I saw my car was being towed. It would not be "oh darn" eye roll, it would be hightail it downstairs to stop the tow truck driver before he got away.

Royal canadian mint two 20 dollar prints. What is the value?

Is that an early computer in the scene after the roommate is found dead? Looks like an old white Macintosh.

All right, I'll say the drive UP to the park looked realistic and in fact looks like an actual location shot. But the PARK SCENE ITSELF was so not, looked actually photoshopped.

So lechery bar guy is the one Kojak suspects? Hmm, I don't think we see Kojak fail often, what's this about?

Okay pretty cool ending I guess, but some of the scenes were hella unrealistic. Gotta love the seventies!

P. S. In the first scene with the killer buyer I thought for a moment it was a young Christopher Walken.

A Sample of a Comedian Doing a Rare Dramatic Turn

[theowinthrop · 22 August 2008]

This episode of Kojak bares some comparison to the one with Eugene Roche that I reviewed a day ago. In both an actor who normally played comic parts was given a straight dramatic part - and went to town with it. Roche played a doormat of an accountant who turns finally into one of those desperate men pushed once too often to the wall. Hardly like his normal roles. Here it was was Chuck McCann, comic foil and remembered fondly by children in the New York City Metropolitan area for his hosting "LET'S HAVE FUN" and similar shows in the 1960s, particularly doing goofy costume walk-ons as Dick Tracy (when showing the "Dick Tracy" cartoons") or "Little Orphan Annie" (complete with white - pupil - less eyes made from cardboard). McCann was a lot of fun, and while he did do dramatic parts occasionally (the retarded friend of Alan Arkin in THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER is his best remembered performance) his comic turns...his imitations of Oliver Hardy in many commercials and shows...were best recalled. McCann is also remembered as one of the founders (with Orson Bean and John McCabe among others) of THE SONS OF THE DESERT fan club for Stan and Ollie.

His appearance in this episode of KOJAK shows how fine a dramatic actor he could be. McCann plays Lloyd Tatum, a salesman in New York City for business. Tatum is a good married man, but like many married men when he is out on the road he strays. He happens to have done so here, but the problem is that the prostitute he picks up (Suzann Blu) is a murder victim. McCann has nothing to do with the murder per se, but he is a witness to the killer (Eddie Fontane) doing the deed. This puts him into a precarious situation - to admit to the world that he saw Fontane kill Blu he has to go public with information that can destroy his marriage and his family life (he has kids too).

Savalas' Kojak finds McCann's Tatum as difficult a witness to work with as was Roche's witness in the other episode. But Kojak has two things working for him: fear and Tatum's conscience. Nobobdy can be intimate with a fellow being who is killed almost immediately afterward and not be stung by the horror and unfairness of what happened to the victim. McCann's Tatum certainly cannot. Also he is aware that the killer is at large and probably may come back to finish the job by getting rid of the sole witness against him.

The episode was worth seeing as McCann goes through the mental tortures of the damned to figure out what to do. At the conclusion it is Fontane who tries to force the issue, and Savalas who delivers the solution. A first rate performance by McCann here.

Welcome to the "Big Apple".

[kapelusznik18 · 5/10 · 3 January 2017]

***SPOILERS***Young Peggy Ferrell, Lynne Marta, gets herself into a hep of trouble by her trying to smuggle two 20 dollar Canadian plates into the country to her boyfriend Alex Fairbanks, Eddie Fontaine, in a foot cast that she claims was the result from a skiing accident. With Eddie keeping one of the plates and Peggy the other screws Eddie's partner Maurice Chemeff, Jack Colvin, from putting the two plates together to print up the cash. This ends with Peggy on the run and Eddie getting plugged by Chemeff for double-crossing him. During all this mayhem in pops the friendly electronic salesman from Encino California Lloyed Tatum, Chuck McCann, to do Marta a favor by getting Chemeff off her back. Not for once realizing the mess he's getting into both here in the "Big Apple" as we'll as back home with his old lady-wife-and two kids!

With Let Kojak, Telly Davalas, and his bloodhound of a partner Det. Bobby Crocker,Kevin Dobson, on the case they soon realize that their up against a serial killer who'll stop at nothing to get his hands on the missing 20 dollar Canadian plate. Instead of calling the whole thing off Chemeff doubles down and goes all out to recover the plate from Peggy going so far as murdering her friend and lover-or Lover Girl-Susan Blu as well as Peggy herself having him murder three people within less then 24 hours before he's stopped.

***SPOILERS*** It's Let. Kojak disguised as a hotel busboy who gets the jump on on Chemeff by tricking him to let him in his hotel room, with a breakfast cart,that ended up in a wild shootout with Chemeff getting the worst of it. As for the by now emotionally and psychically drained-In him being held hostage by the crazed Chemeff-Lloyd Tatum Let. Kojak assures him that his wife back in Encino won't find out about his New York Adventure, especially with the young and attractive Peggy Ferrell,that if she did would destroy his both reputation as a God fearing family man as well as his marriage.