Electronics expert Harold Van Wick has wired his estate-home with closed-circuit television cameras and video recorders. His costly fascination with gadgetry raises the ire of his frugal mother-in-law, who owns the firm where Van Wick is the chief executive. His mother-in-law orders him to resign and threatens to reveal his philandering ways that she has discovered through a private detective. So, Van Wick schemes to murder his mother-in-law on tape while a recorded image of an empty study is being received by the guard monitoring the estate's rooms on television screens at the gate to the Van Wick estate; then, Van Wick timer-sets the recording of the murder to play while he is at a social function, thus giving him an alibi. He forces open a window and lays footprints outside to make the murder look like the deed of a burglar. But Lieutenant Columbo, the super-intelligent detective of many fetishes and a rumpled raincoat, suspects Van Wick and asks incessant questions as he probes the murder and tries to link it to Van Wick.
Bart Burns, Gena Rowlands, Herbert Jefferson Jr, Martha Scott, Oskar Werner, Patricia Barry, Peter Falk, Robert Brown, Steven Marlo, Trisha Noble
Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller