Hello again and welcome to the happiest day of the year, the day we celebrate the life and career of the great Italian-American who, unlike the other guy, never enslaved or killed anyone: Lieutenant Columbo. Happy Columbo’s Day, everyone!
This year, we’re taking a look at the episode with the highest average audience ranking of any Columbo episode on the IMDb, and which famously ranks first in the hearts of many Columbo fans around the world: “Any Old Port in a Storm,” which first aired on NBC on October 7, 1973. If you like this, be sure to check out my earlier writeups from 2015 on.
We open on several snooty-looking gentlemen in the tasting room of Carsini Wineries as they hold aloft glasses of red wine. “Titian would have gone mad trying to mix so beautiful a red,” says Adrian Carsini (Donald Pleasence), just in case you thought there was even the slightest chance our murderer would not turn out to be completely insufferable. “And he would have failed dismally in the attempt.” As the others agree that the wine is exquisite, Adrian excuses himself to fetch the next flight.
Entering his office where the claret is breathing, he is surprised by his younger half-brother Ric (Gary Conway). Rick demands money for his upcoming wedding, and the two men bicker about the family business, as often happens on this show. Ric inherited the winery from their father, and he agreed to let Adrian run it, but Adrian has blown his own inheritance doing stupid things like producing small-batch private reserve vintages to serve exclusively to his friends, if he even allows anyone to drink them at all. Ric announces that he’s decided to sell the winery to the Marino brothers, leading to a hilarious tantrum from Adrian: “The Marino brothers!? The sixty-nine-cents-a-gallon Marino brothers!? They don’t make wine! They don’t even make good mouthwash!!”
Rick doesn’t give a shit, because the Marino brothers actually run their operation like a business, unlike Adrian, and Ric just wants the money. “I have given twenty-five years of my life to this land!” Adrian rants. “You think I’m going to let some ignorant Neapolitan turn it into a wino heaven!?” Rick smugly tells him he doesn’t have a choice. But Adrian does have a choice: enraged, he grabs a heavy brass vase and brains Ric with it.
But Ric’s not dead—he’s just unconscious, which leaves Adrian in a bit of a situation. Grabbing the claret, he returns to his outer office just as his secretary Karen (Julie Harris) enters to grab some paperwork in preparation for their upcoming trip to New York to attend a wine auction. As he skittishly hustles her back out the door, she mentions that she saw Ric’s car outside, which makes for another loose end Adrian’s gonna have to take care of, great.
As Adrian presents the claret to his guests, they let him in on some good news that he already knows: the wine society they represent plans to name him Man of the Year after his upcoming New York visit. After enjoying their wine, the guests take their leave, and Adrian hurries back to the office to deal with the unconscious body of his brother. Dragging Ric into the wine storage room (can you call it a cellar if it’s above ground?), Adrian begins implementing one of the needlessly complicated murder plans we all love to see, which for the moment consists of binding Ric’s hands with rope, switching off the air conditioning unit, and leaving him there as he takes off to New York for several days.
Now, I’ve seen this episode several times and I’ve read commentary on it from several people, so I think I understand what’s supposed to be going on here, yet this is easily the most ridiculous plan I’ve ever seen on this show and it’s hard to see how it didn’t get fixed after the first draft of the script. As near as I can figure, the plan is for Ric to eventually use up all the oxygen in the cellar and suffocate to death. The perfect crime, except for the small detail that there’s no way this could possibly work. Let’s start with the fact that this wine cellar is not even remotely hermetically sealed, and there are at least two entrances to it, which should ensure some air circulation even when both doors are closed. I don’t think you would even want a wine cellar to be hermetically sealed, would you? Letting a bunch of funky stale air build up around your precious bottles? Then there’s the air conditioning, which Adrian switches off in an apparent effort to speed up the suffocation process by stopping the air from circulating. Except that that’s not how AC works at all. An AC unit is designed to circulate air between the inside and outside, which it does using a big ol’ hose. Turning the unit off does not seal up the hose. And then there’s the fact that this cellar is huge, which means that even if the air circulation were poor enough to make suffocation possible, Ric will almost certainly regain consciousness long before his life is in any danger. Then what? He’s got days, potentially, to free his hands, and even if he can’t, he’s a young, strong guy who’s got lots of options for getting out. And even if the AC trick worked, the unit is just controlled by an ordinary light switch that Ric could turn on with his mouth if he had to! Look, I know this is an immensely popular episode, and there are some good reasons for that, but I just can’t get past the ridiculousness of the murder plot, or the fact that (spoiler alert) it actually works somehow. I guess you could call that a part of the episode’s charm, but it’s really not.
Anyway. Having put his foolproof plan into operation, Adrian hides Ric’s Ferrari convertible in the garage and takes off for the airport. Wine guys, Adrian, and Karen all share the same cross-country flight on a glorious old-school Boeing 747 complete with spiral staircase and a piano lounge in first class. Adrian dictates a letter to Ric and tells Karen to send him $5000 for his wedding. In New York, Adrian casually drops $18,000 at the auction before putting down another five large for a single bottle of California wine bottled in 1850. “Nobody really needs a $5000 bottle of wine, Karen,” he confesses. “I just don’t want anybody else to have it.” Hard to believe this guy is spending himself into insolvency, huh?
Finally, it’s Columbo time! The detective is at the police station talking to Ric’s fiancée Joan (Joyce Jillson), who got worried when he didn’t show up to meet her in Acapulco and hasn’t been able to reach him for three days. “I spoke to him on the phone Sunday,” Joan says. “He said he’d been scuba diving that morning and that he was now on his way to the winery.” Despite not working in Missing Persons, Columbo decides to investigate.
Back at the winery, Ric is in fact dead, somehow, and Adrian launches phase II of Operation Foolproof. The fiftyish Adrian manages to wrestle Ric’s corpse into his scuba suit and loads him and a little fold-up bicycle into the Ferrari and drives out to the coast. He tosses Ric into the drink and deposits the bike by the side of the road, then gets himself back to town slapstick-style via the little fold-up bicycle from the trunk. Such a great plan.
Some indeterminate amount of time later, the police have discovered the car and the body. Pulling up to the crime scene, Columbo is very interested to learn that the decedent happens to be Ric Carsini, the man Joan had spoken to him about. He tracks Joan down at a lakeside resort and gives her the bad news, learning along the way that Ric and Adrian hated each other and that Ric was planning to sell the business.
Inside at the bar, Columbo sees a news report about Ric’s death, which reveals that he died about six days ago. This sets Columbo’s mind off on a tangent, and he asks folks around the bar if they know whether it rained last Tuesday. No one knows. Eventually he learns the answer, which is apparently yes, because it prompts a question to Joan about Ric’s relationship with his convertible. “Sometimes I think he loved it more than he loved me,” she replies. Very interesting.
Columbo drops in to the winery to visit Adrian. Decanting a bottle of cabernet sauvignon through a cheesecloth to separate out the sediment, Adrian explains that Ric was always a bit of a daredevil, so he wasn’t surprised to learn that he met his end scuba diving. Using Karen as an alibi, he establishes that they both last saw Ric on the day they left for New York, two days before his estimated time of death. Columbo explains his puzzlement about the weather: why would Ric have left the top down on his Ferrari when it was raining on and off all day the day he died? (Columbo also notes that the weather that day reached a high of 48 degrees. This will be significant later.)
From the medical examiner Columbo learns that Ric hadn’t eaten for two days before he died, which doesn’t add up. Like most athletic individuals, Ric was known to eat like a horse, and there’s no way he would have fasted for two days before going scuba diving.
Columbo interviews Falcon and Stein (Dana Elcar, Robert Ellenstein), two of the wine guys who were at the winery the day Ric’s car was last seen there. They never saw Ric there, but they do recall that Adrian ducked into his office for a few minutes to get the claret. “I took a particular delight in the fact that he allowed me to decant the claret,” Falcon says, which makes Columbo prick up his ears again—earlier, Adrian made a point of telling the detective that he never allows anyone but himself to decant his bottles.
In preparation for his next visit to Adrian, Columbo goes to an upscale wine shop for a crash course in oenophilia from a snooty Frenchman (George Gaynes). When next the detective darkens Adrian’s door, the formerly unschooled detective floors him with his sudden expertise over a proffered glass: “Sensitive breeding. Rich bouquet. Strong vinosity. Well, it’s a Burgundy. I’m just not sure whether it’s a pinot noir or a gamay.” It is indeed a pinot, but Columbo’s guess is due less to his palate than to his detective skills: he knew Carsini only makes three different reds, and Columbo could tell it wasn’t the cab he was served during his last visit, so he knew it had to be one of the two Burgundies.
Having put Adrian at ease, Columbo finagles a visit to the cellar to see the vintner’s collection of expensive bottles. Adrian explains that the purpose of a wine cellar is to protect the wine against extreme heat. “Right now it’s no problem, but in the summer it gets very hot outside, and that could damage the wine.” Keep this in mind. Columbo allows as how he’d sure hate to get trapped in here, but Adrian says no one could get trapped, because the door locks from the outside only. Oh, COME ON!! When Adrian came back after the New York trip, he very plainly found Ric in a different position than he left him in. Clearly Ric regained consciousness before he died, probably long before. So Ric has hours and hours with nothing to do except figure out how to escape before he “suffocates,” and the friggin’ door isn’t even locked from the inside? (And as no less a figure than Columbo himself astutely notes, he wouldn’t be in any danger of dehydration either, because THE PLACE IS FULL OF WINE!!) At this point it’s hard not to feel like the writers are just taunting us.
Anyway. Columbo enthuses over Adrian’s collection, manhandling any number of priceless bottles along the way, and eggs the vintner on by supposing that he must have served a “cheaper” claret to his wine buddies the day before the trip. When Adrian indignantly protests, Columbo drops the hammer: so why didn’t you decant the wine yourself? Oh, Adrian stammers, he just wanted to do something nice for the men who were about to honor him, and he knew Falcon had a steady hand. Columbo again asks if there’s any way someone could get trapped in the cellar, and the show twists the knife further into my gut by having Adrian shut the detective inside and making him free himself. “Gee, it’s very simple,” Columbo says. “All you have to do is push it.” Jesus Christ.
They walk out of the building together, Columbo absently whistling “This Old Man”—this is in fact the very first episode where the detective whistles the tune, an improvisation Peter Falk came up with on the set and stuck with for many more episodes. Just before leaving, he one-more-things Adrian: it rained several times between Ric’s death and the discovery of his body a week later, yet there was no evidence of rain damage to the interior of the vehicle. Gotta go.
Columbo pops by Karen Fielding’s home to ask her about Ric’s comings and goings before the trip. She lies and says that she saw Ric drive away after visiting the winery, when we know he was actually unconscious in the cellar. Setting up his endgame, Columbo arranges to take Adrian and Karen out to a nice restaurant to bury the hatchet and apologize for pestering them repeatedly. Driving to the restaurant, Karen tells Adrian that Columbo suspects him of having a hand in Ric’s death. Pointedly, Adrian asks: do you suspect me? Karen says she does not.
It's dinner time. Columbo pulls his shitty car up to the restaurant and leaves it in the hands of the hapless valet. He’s there before the other two, and asks the maître d’ (Columbo favorite Vito Scotti, last seen around these parts as the wino in 1974’s “Negative Reaction”) to send over the wine steward before they arrive. The result is a couple of excellent wine pairings that impress the hell out of Adrian, who can’t wait to see what the after dinner wine is going to be. “I know exactly what I want,” Columbo says. “I’m just praying that they have it.” He orders a bottle of Ferrier ’45 vintage port, upon hearing which Adrian’s face falls. “My dear Columbo,” he says, “I’m afraid you've set this man an impossible task. I'm familiar with this particular vintage port, and I would hasten to wager that he does not have it in his cellar. Moreover, the price would be prohibitive.”
Wonder of wonders, the restaurant does have a bottle of the Ferrier, and Adrian is transported at the thought of sampling such a heavenly vintage. Columbo and Karen both think it’s great, but Adrian takes one sip and is appalled. What follows is nothing short of legendary:
ADRIAN: This is dreadful.
WAITER: Monsieur...
ADRIAN: This is dreadful. Don't you realize that a great wine is like a great work of art? It has to be nurtured. It has to be taken care of. You have subjected this port to a temperature in excess of 150 degrees. Such disdain cannot and must not be tolerated. [to Columbo] I advise you not to pay for the check.
COLUMBO: But sir, I think that, uh…
ADRIAN: This wine has been oxidized by overheating! Where did you keep it, on top of the stove? Don't you know any delicate wine spoils by being subjected to a rapid change in temperature? Serving this… iodine is an insult!
MAÎTRE D’: Is there something wrong?
ADRIAN: IS there something wrong!? EVERYTHING is wrong! An exciting meal has been ruined by the presence of this… [splutters] LIQUID FILTH!!
Adrian storms off, dragging Karen behind him, as the wait staff simpers and Columbo tries to make good on the check. Outside, Adrian apologizes for his outburst, but dangit, it’s just a crime to treat an exquisite port that way. Columbo notes that it reached 109 degrees one day last week, but he supposes Adrian doesn’t know about that because he was out of town. The color drains from Adrian’s face as he recalls turning off the AC in his wine cellar to kill Ric.
(For the record, prior to the airing of this episode the recorded temperature in Los Angeles had only ever reached 109 degrees one time outside the summertime, on September 26, 1963, in the middle of a heat wave that saw highs in the 80s and higher every day for a week. Even recognizing that the temperature on the coast was probably several degrees cooler than in the city, it’s just not credible that the thermometer would have topped out at 48 degrees the day Ric died only to hit triple digits a day or two later. I know I’m nitpicking this episode more than usual, but these are all mistakes that should have been caught and fixed easily.)
Columbo thanks Karen for telling him about seeing Ric driving away from the winery on Sunday, which helped him clear Adrian of suspicion. As they drive away, Adrian asks Karen why she lied. “I care about you, Adrian, don’t you see?” she says. “I don’t have anything else. I care about you.” Well, this is awkward. Instead of being grateful, Adrian is angry that Karen now has a hold over him. He’s not imagining it, either: Karen intends to use her leverage over Adrian to force him to marry her. This is the kind of things that typically gets people killed on this show, Karen.
Back at the wine cellar, and Adrian’s worst fears are confirmed: the heat wave has indeed funkified all of his precious bottles of wine. He drives to the sea and is chucking them all into the surf when he is caught by Columbo. How did he know? The ruined bottle of port at the restaurant actually came from Adrian’s own collection; Columbo had nicked it when Adrian was showing him the wine cellar. He knew that only a man with a palate like Adrian’s would be able to tell the port was overheated… which had to mean the air conditioning was off in the cellar on the day of the heat wave… which had to mean that Adrian had deliberately turned it off to suffocate Ric, or something like that. Honestly, at this point your guess is as good as mine.
Columbo drives Adrian back to his winery for one last visit before taking him into custody. As they sit, the detective pulls out a final gift: a fiasco of excellent dessert wine from Italy. Very suitable for the final course,” the vintner says, pensively.
So that’s our murder! The episode is marred by a murder plot and cover-up that are so ludicrous as to defy suspension of disbelief, but that is more than made up for by the presence of Donald Pleasence as the murderer. A staple of film in the late 20th century, Pleasence is well remembered today as the most famous portrayer of SPECTRE head Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond films, a role that has been parodied countless times, including by Mike Myers as Dr. Evil. It’s easy to see aspects of Blofeld in Pleasence’s portrayal of Adrian Carsini, a physically unassuming man who masks his rage and instability with a façade of unemotional serenity.
Columbo: Any Old Port in a Storm can be seen on Amazon Prime Video in the US. Columbophile covers this episode over at his site, and don’t miss Gerry and Iain’s discussion on the Columbo Podcast. Catch you back here this time next year!