McMillan & Wife (TV Series) Night of the Wizard (1972) User Reviews

Magical episode

[xbatgirl-30029 · 9/10 · 3 September 2022]

I have a soft spot for TV movies and episodes from the seventies that had any type of occult angle. Good thing there are lots of them.

I love the opening that starts in the middle of a police chase on the streets of San Francisco. It turns out this is Mac wrapping up another case. It's actually a big pet peeve of mine when shows start in the middle of an action scene, then everything freezes and a title says "24 hours earlier". It's such a cheap, hacky way to start with a bang. The cliff hanger is rarely compelling. Instead, in this case, we get all the action up front, without any clichés.

Then the plot really starts with a seance that includes typical seventies effects and melodrama. The characters in this episode seem to live in homes straight out a Hammer movie crossed with the Munsters, which is a good thing and feeds the atmosphere of mild mannered, scary only to kids horror.

There are all sorts of good, comical throw away moments like when Mac is trying to get Mildred to pour him some coffee but she's too busy talking to give him any, or when Mandini asks Enright to pick a card from a trick deck but Mac cuts off their fun, or later when Mildred is getting herself something to drink in the middle of the night. Or the final fight that includes magic props. The cast always seems to be having a great time and it's part of why I love this show. John Astin plays yet another memorable, hilariously off beat character of a CSI type who is occasionally recurring.

The clothes are cravable boho chic, especially Sally's menswear suit with big tie and trenchcoat contrasted with her long hair. More amusing is Eileen Brennan's housedress (?) with fur cuffs. BTW her big scene is so melodramatic over the top, it would fit right into a parody like Murder By Death or The Carol Burnett Show.

I can only dream of getting to live in the lakeside, mid-century A-frame Mac and Enright track one clue to. The friendship and camaraderie between those two is good as ever. Enright's bad tooth gets to be a bit too much but it leads to a clue so it does have a point. And we all know to be suspicious if ever a corpse has its face or head damaged beyond recognition. It's amazing crimes were ever solved in the days before DNA.

The ending does get a little overly convoluted involving a bit of telling us, not showing us. But the exact ins and outs of a mystery are not really why I watch and love this show. It's the characters, their relationships, and what they get up to. Their warmth and affection for each other is something I miss from many more modern crime shows.

Justice isn't an angle,Why don't you turn that into a bumper sticker!

[Sylviastel · 8/10 · 8 January 2019]

John Astin, Carole Cook, Eileen Brennan and Philip Carey are notable guest appearances in beginning of a seance and a mystery unfolds about a dead husband whose widow is clinging to her sanity. The episode is quite entertaining as Sally is friends with the widow. There is a seance in the beginning. The mystery slowly unfolds unlike Columbo where you know ahead. Mac and Sally are trying to solve complex mysteries. The

"Why did you murder me?"

[profh-1 · 6/10 · 23 April 2024]

Mac & Sally are invited to a seance at which a murdered man appears accusing his widow of the crime! Mac, refusing to believe in ghosts, wracks his brain for most of the story, trying to figure out who could be impersonating the dead man, who benefitted from his death, would benefit from driving his widow insane, and... is the dead man REALLY dead in the first place?

You know, if they'd swapped this story and the next one, this could have easily aired as a HALLOWEEN episode.

Sharon Acker is "Evie Kendall", the grieving widow. I had to look her up before I realized I'd seen her in a STAR TREK and 2 episodes of HEC RAMSEY.

Paul Richards is "Dr. Eli Spake", who's trying his best to help Evie avoid a nervous breakdown. Every time I see his face or hear his voice, I'm always reminded the most memorable line the actor ever spoke in his career was, "Glory be to the bomb and to the holy fallout" (from BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES).

Cameron Mitchell is "Harry Hastings", a semi-retired stage magician who admits he's in love with the widow. When spooky stuff happens at night designed to scare Sally, it became a bit too obvious that he was probably involved. (The previous season, he'd played a man who faked his own death in the McCLOUD episode, "Somebody's Out To Get Jennie".)

Eileen Brennan is "Nora Dane", friend of the family, who may know more than she says. I always mostly remember her for THE CHEAP DETECTIVE (1978) with Peter Falk.

Martin E. Brooks makes his 2nd appearances as "Deputy D. A. Chapman", convinced Evie DID kill her husband, accuses Mac of helping a murderess go free, and hopes to hit her with at least a purjury charge.

John Astin makes his debut as "Skyes", the eccentric police scientist who tries to determine if the body they buried a year earlier is in fact Evie's husband, or not. I always enjoyed him on this show, and was surprised that he didn't appear in that many episodes.

Philip Carey is "Arthur Kendall", the dead husband (or is he?) seen (mostly) in flashbacks. In the 1950s, he starred as PHILIP MARLOWE on TV.

This episode opens with a high-speed chase (WHAT, AGAIN???), once more causing me to ask, "WHY is the Police Commissioner taking part in chasing a bad guy?" I guess Mac must really like being that involved. Later, as Mac works to figure out the mystery, I'm reminded that this show really tended to have some of the most unusual murder mysteries ever seen on TV, and it's clear that Mac's mind does not work like normal people's. There's Charlie Chan, there's Hercule Poirot, and then there's Stewart McMillan-- and each of these characters' thought processes are unique. Time and again, when a new twist is revealed, or a new plot point suddenly figured out, it feels like my head is exploding as I watch. It's no wonder I like this show.

Sally, oddly, doesn't get to do much in this one, except look beautiful. I was reminded that, when this episode was made, Susan St. James had only recently become a new mother in real life. (But, very strangely, this was not reflected in the series-- despite Sally being pregnant in the PREVIOUS story. I guess there was a miscarriage.)

All kinds of illusions

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 4 December 2015]

Rock Hudson and Susan St.James enter a world where the San Francisco PD has no jurisdiction. After capturing a criminal on a San Francisco trolley car, our hands on Police Commissioner and his wife go to séance held by Sharon Acker who was acquitted of murdering her husband Philip Carey. Flashbacks show he was probably no great loss. Suspicions do remain though.

The various guest stars are mostly people who have some connection with Acker and her late husband. There is a nice turn in this one by John Astin who works the police lab. But this episode held no suspense for me because given the nature of the campaign of terror against Acker starting with that séance it's rather obvious who the villain is. And of course there's another murder discovered as well.

If things are creaking in the night, you can bet it's just Mildred in the kitchen!

[moonspinner55 · 5/10 · 29 March 2024]

S02-E01 of "McMillan & Wife" is so outrageous (in the show's usual blasé, low-key way) that it's almost successful as dry camp. Opening with a séance scene (in which the seer introduces us to everyone at the table like a movie narrator), we learn that a widowed friend of Mac and Sally's was tried for the murder of her husband but was acquitted. She's freaked out because he's taken to appearing to her in ghostly form at Madame Zara's to plead, "Why, Evie, why did you murder me?" Carole Cook plays Madame Zara (she also played a phony psychic named Madame Dorian in an episode of "Charlie's Angels" called "The Séance" in 1976), but writer Steve Fisher quickly dispenses with her as Mac investigates the man's demise (he was shot in the face with a shotgun, rendering the corpse unrecognizable à la "Laura"!). Suspects include Cameron Mitchell as nutty magician Harry Hastings whose nightclub act includes a crawling spider and bats flying through the audience; Eileen Brennan as another friend of the dead man and his wife whose own husband is away "in Hong Kong"; and Sharon Acker as the hysterical widow who keeps declaring, "Show yourself, Arthur!" Housekeeper Mildred thinks the killer is the widow; she's also got Sally jumping at creaks in the night. Meanwhile, Sgt. Enright has his toothache temporarily cured by the magician, a man who lives in a lakeside castle with "Open Sesame!" front doors (the nightclub business must be paying off!). Mac's conclusions at the finale don't quite cover all the holes in this teleplay; Fisher and director Robert Michael Lewis devote more time to a sword-and-fist fight while Sally is busy being molested by a mechanical demon.

**

[edwagreen · 4/10 · 9 April 2016]

A terribly confusing episode with a seance revealing that a dead husband comes back and accuses the widow of murdering him!

Of course, the widow is a friend of Mac and his wife who has been found not guilty of his murder.

This episode was really a very bad take-off of the 1944 Ingrid Bergman, Oscar winner, with Charles Boyer, "Gaslight."

We meet all sorts of weird people in the episode- magician Harry Mandini, played by Cameron Mitchell. You don't have to have a doctorate to realize that the name rhymes with Harry Houdini.

All sorts of optical illusions abound here and you wonder if the man is really dead. Wait until you find out who is really dead and who played a subordinate role in his killing. By that time, you will be so thoroughly confused that you couldn't care less.