Arny Freeman | Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Decoy, which aired in Syndication in 1957 and 1958. The show can be viewed on Tubi!

Episode 1.28 “Ladies Man”

(Dir by Stuart Rosenberg, originally aired on April 21st, 1958)

A man named (Michael Tolan) approaches Pearl Dillard (Chris Kane) at a subway station and gives her a box that he claims is an x-ray camera. The man claims to be an insurance investigator and he says that he’s pursuing a woman (Lois Nettleton) who has stolen some diamonds. He says that he needs Pearl to take a picture of the woman. Because it’s an X-ray camera, it will reveal that she has the diamonds on her. While the woman waits for her train, Pearl points the box at her and pushes a button. However, it turns out that the box is not hiding a camera but a gun! Pearl shoots the woman in the back.

The woman is named Lois and the man was her husband, Mike. The police get a tip that Mike is hiding out at an upstate hunting lodge. Casey, who pretends to be a lost tourist, heads up to the lodge. Mike is indeed there. With Mike is his new girlfriend (Joan Harvey), who refuses to believe that Mike could have done anything wrong.

This episode was a bit more melodramatic than the typical episode of Decoy. I found it hard to believe that anyone would fall for Mike’s camera-box lie but I guess there are probably people out there who would be naive enough to believe him. (I might accept the box from Mike but I would throw it away the first chance I got.) Unfortunately, once Casey tracked Mike down, Michael Tolan’s performance was so over-the-top that it became difficult to take him or the episode seriously.

Decoy worked better as a low-key, melancholiac show. I usually love melodrama but this episode didn’t work for me.

David Greenberg (Ron Liebman) and Robert Hantz (David Selby) are two tough and smart New York City cops who become detectives and play by their own rules. They make arrests off-duty. They drive their lieutenants crazy. They bust drug dealers and prostitutes and single-handedly clean up their police precinct. They’re the Super Cops and they’re even nicknamed Batman and Robin. When they throw punches, a graphic “POW” appears on screen with a sound effect.

There’s an old saying about how, when the truth is different from the legend, always print the legend. That’s certainly the case here. The real-life David Greenberg went into politics and ended up doing time for mail fraud, insurance fraud, and obstruction of justice. Robert Hantz was busted for possessing marijuana while he was on vacation in the Bahamas. The arrest led to a demotion and Hantz quit the force as a result. The film hints at Greenberg and Hantz’s involvement with the Knapp Commission, which investigated police corruption in the 70s. (Lisa wrote about it when she reviewed Serpico.) But the film does not mention that the Knapp Commission suspected that Greenberg and Hantz murdered two drug dealers.

You don’t get any of that with The Super Cops, which tries to mix the grittiness of films like The French Connection, The Seven-Ups, and Serpico with moments of cartoonish comedy and it really doesn’t work. (Years after The Super Cops was released, Hill Street Blues proved that gritty drama and dark comedy could be mixed but it has to be done just right.) Ron Liebman overacts while David Selby doesn’t seem to be acting at all. (Liebman and Selby are both good actors but you wouldn’t know that from this movie. For Liebman, I suggest checking out his performance in Night Falls On Manhattan. For Selby, I recommend an overlooked dark comedy called Headless Body in Topless Bar.) It’s hard to believe that Gordon Parks went from doing Shaft to doing this. Shaft would have tossed the Super Cops through a window. Popeye Doyle would have given him an assist.

There is one good thing to note about The Super Cops. Edgar Wright is a fan of this film and it partially inspired the far superior Hot Fuzz.