Asylum

****SPOILERS**** After the mysterious deaths and one suicide of a number of patients at the prestigious Robb Psychatric Clinic it's decided to have SFPD inspector Steve Kerller, Michael Douglas, go undercover there as a psychiatric patient to finds out just what's going on there. Faking mantel illness Keller make It point to get very friendly with the person who was on the scene of one of the strange deaths there Susan Howard, Belinda Montgomery.

Slowly getting Susan to confide in him Keller finds himself being set up as the next victim there by whoever is doing the murdering.It's when Keller gets in touch with his boss on the SFPD who's acting as his uncle Let. Mike Stone, Karl Malden, that the killer goes into overdrive in order to not only have him murdered by slipping a drug in his drink that would induce suicide but Susan as well. That's for her staring to recover her memory in knowing who he is and identifying him to the police!

***SPOILERS*** In him putting his both life as well as mantel faculties on the line to solve this baffling case almost had Inspt. Keller fly out of a six floor window thinking he was a bird flying south for the winter. It was in fact Susan who kept Keller from taking his final dive or flight by getting him to get off the ledge of the building, by pretending to fly along with him, and have him rescued by non other then the director of the clinic Dr. Jonas Robb, James Olsen,who up until then was the #1 suspect in the string of unsolved deaths that happened there.

As for the eventual killer he meant well, in his disturbed mind, in what he did he murdered or in his mind etherized his victims to keep them and their families from unnecessary suffering. He also kept the clinic from going into bankruptcy in the money he got from the victims families in, so he thought, doing what he did!

This episode is made great by Belinda Montgomery. In the last couple of years, I've been going through a lot of detective, thriller, horror - in short, manly - stuff from the 70s and 80s and I've now seen her in a lot of TV series and quite a few films (you horror fans out there, check out Silent Madness from 1984, in which she's the lead; it's schlock, as you would expect, but still well worth a look.)

Here, she plays a patient in a psychiatric institute who becomes an unwitting participant in the case of the week. She's more or less the focal point of Stone and Keller's investigation. The thing is - and get this, talkers - she never utters a single word. If the reason is given, I've obviously missed it; I just know that she doesn't speak at all. The success of the whole episode depends on the mixture of innocence, fragility, beauty and fear she can portray at any point, how much emotion she can convey through her facial expressions.

And she pulls it off effortlessly. She plays the role so brilliantly that all you want to do is jump into a time machine, go back to the mid-70s, rescue her and make her listen to some decent music. "And then?" I hear you eagerly cry in unison. Well, what happens next is the lady's choice, of course.

A fantastic episode. Malden and Douglas have had the cop camaraderie down pat from the beginning. The stories are well written and there's never a shortage of familiar, very capable guest stars to give each episode an extra boost. But this is my favourite so far, anchored by a terrific central performance from the belle Bel'.

Okay, enough of this jibber-jabber. My Ikea delivery's just arrived and I've got a time machine to assemble. See you earlier, suckers!