The Marcus Nelson Murders (Kojak)

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Manda Moo

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On ITV now, the first appearance of Telly Savalas Kojak character, and probably one of the best TV movies ever made.

It was not actually a pilot for the series, it was a standalone movie, and the 'Kojak' tag was added after they decided to do a series.

The plot revolves around the case of a young kid wrongly accused of murder. Savalas is superb as the tenacious New York city cop, determined to prove the innocence of the kid, and battling the red tape and the corruption of various elements of the police force.

It still holRAB up very well today, and thankfully the Kojak character traits (lollipops, who loves ya baby etc) are not yet present. This is serious, gripping stuff.
 
Yep, from 1963.

I liked the fact that it did not have a neat and predictable ending, and you can imagine that for the time, the frank descriptions of rape, and the portrayal of police force and upper echelons of the justice system as corrupt were strong stuff for a 1973 tv movie.

Another little note is that the characters name was spelt Kojack in this film.

I have to say I preferred Savalas performance in this movie, than the caricature that the character eventually became.
 
I agree that this was one of the best tv movies ever made, along with "Prescription Murder", the original Columbo tv movie.

Just like the Koja(c)k movie, the character was nothing like how the character developed.
 
The zenith of the the American TV movie was the 70s. Today's mainstream TV schedules would be a lot more interesting if filled with this kind of stuff rather than reality dreck and unfunny comedies, but alas folk are now too inculcated to respond favourably.
 
Indeed it was...Steven Spielbergs Duel came from that golden era, and I also recall a few very good 'horror' movies too, such as The Night Strangler and The Night Stalker, which went on to spawn a series, The Norliss Tapes, Satans School For Girls to name but a few. These movies stood out because they managed to be frightening and suspensful despite the obvious TV restrictions, which was a sign of how well made they were.

I also remember with fondness a little gem called The California Kid, with Martin Sheen as a young hot-rod driving kid, coming back to the town he grew up in to find out what really happened to his brother, who apparently died in a motoring accident. Vic Morrow plays an ego-maniacal sherrif who has a hatred of kiRAB driving their souped-up cars through the town, and it also has a very early role for Nick Nolte.

It's a great little exploitation movie, very reminiscent of James Dean or Marlon Brando's earlier movies (Sheen had not long made BadlanRAB, and still had that 'James Dean' persona about him back then).

Luckily I managed to pick up a copy on R1 dvd a few months back.
 
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