Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1973’s The Bait! It can be viewed on YouTube!
Tracey Fleming (Donna Mills) is the widow of a cop and an undercover detective herself. Unfortunately, her superior, Captain Maryk (Michael Constantine), is not convinced that Tracey has what it takes to be in a dangerous situation and, as a result, Tracey spends most of her time riding the bus and busting perverts and low-level drug dealers. When four woman are raped and murdered by the same serial killer, Tracey writes up a report on what she thinks is motivating the killer. Captain Maryk is, at first, skeptical about Tracey’s claim that the killer is fueled by a puritanical rage but, when it turns out that the killer has been wiping off his victims’s lipstick (just as Tracey speculated that he was), Maryk starts to think that Tracey might have something to offer the investigation.
Tracey becomes the bait in an operation to lure out the killer. Leaving behind her son and her mother, Tracey moves into an apartment in the neighborhood that is believed to be the center of the killer’s activities. Tracey is given a job as a survey taker and soon, she’s walking around the neighborhood and asking random men for their opinions on current events and women’s liberation. A local waitress (Arlene Golonka) recognizes Tracey as a detective but Tracey lies and say that she’s no longer with the force. When the killer makes the waitress his next victim, Tracey becomes even more determined to capture him but will she able to get Marsyk and the rest of the force to give her the room to investigate the murders?
This may sound like an intriguing whodunit but, for some reason, The Bait reveals early on that the murderer is a bus driver named Earl Stokely (played, in a very early performance, by William Devane). There’s really nothing to be gained by revealing the killer’s identity as early as the film does. Perhaps if the film was split between scenes of Tracey investigating the neighborhood and Earl stalking Tracey, that would have generated some sort of suspense but, with the exception of one bus ride, Tracey and Earl barely even interact before he comes after her at the film’s end. Devane does give a good performance as a homicidal lunatic but, when viewed today, it’s impossible to watch him in this film without spending most of the time thinking, “Hey, that’s the usually Kennedyesque William Devane, playing a killer bus driver!”
I was not surprised to learn that The Bait was intended to be a pilot for a weekly television series that would have followed the future investigations of Tracey Fleming. Donna Mills was likable in the lead role and she had a good chemistry with the other actors playing her colleagues so it’s easy to imagine a series in which Tracey solved a new case every week while Marsyk continually underestimated her. Ultimately, though, that series never happened and The Bait would be the sole televised adventure of Detective Tracey Fleming.
Through the Shattered Lens 