Westering (Ray Danton) is the leader of a small new age cult who lives on a houseboat and plans to take his followers to a faraway island and start the colony of New Eden. But we know he's a bit too slick and handsome (and horny) to be genuine—he is in the process of dumping his current mistress Eve for a woman who calls herself Sister Isabelle. The group comes to the attention of Inspector Oscar Piper (James Gregory) when a banker asks for assistance in finding Lenore, a runaway heiress, last seen in a hippie van heading out to join a commune. She is needed to attend to various financial matters and Oscar, head of the homicide department, says they will do their best to return Lenore to "the bosom of her bank." Technically, the case is not part of his beat, but his sort-of girlfriend, retired teacher Hildegarde Withers (Eve Arden), eggs him on to let her investigate, with travel assistance from her handsome young neighbor Aloysius Fister (Dennis Rucker); he drives a motorcycle and she rides in the sidecar. Charmed by Hildy, the hippies let her on the boat and she is witness to the death of Westering when he drinks a glass of wine poisoned with arsenic. Now that there has been a mysterious death, Oscar can get involved. He believes that the trip to an island would never have happened because the boat isn't seaworthy. Soon, they discover that Sister Isabelle is Lenore, so she's a suspect, as is Westering's wife Aleatha (Julie Newmar) who runs a fancy French restaurant, doesn't belong to the cult, and claims not to have been bothered by Westering's affairs. Hildegarde also discovers that the restaurant has a supply of the wine that was poisoned. A mysterious middle-aged hippie named Onofre, who was planning a rival cult, is also a suspect—Hildegarde calls him Rasputin because of his long hair, long beard, and flowing robe. Lenore, who may be in danger because of her money and her status as mistress to the dead man, lives with Hildy temporarily which allows Aloysius to flirt a bit with her, as well as be her protector. Another death or two is in store before Hildegarde figures things out.
If you've been a long time reader of my blog, you might remember Hildegarde Withers as the main character in a handful of 1930s mysteries based on a series of books by Stuart Palmer. Her best portrayer, Edna May Oliver, played her as a prickly, aloof spinster who carries on a mildly flirtatious relationship with Oscar. In this movie, based loosely on a posthumously published novel that was finished by another author, Arden plays Withers with no hint of spinster and just a little hint of prickliness. But the character never quite gels and she winds up feeling like a poor fit for the hippies & drugs milieu into which she is thrust. James Gregory, immortalized as the cranky Inspector Luger in TV's Barney Miller, is certainly cranky here, but not as charming as James Gleason was in the 30s movies. He has little to do and maybe because of this has zero chemistry with Arden. This may be an idiosyncratic observation of mine, but both actors have very distinct and mannered performing styles—Arden drily overemphasizing her dialogue and Gregory growling his—and the combination got irritating after a while. Aside from the TV show Our Miss Brooks, Arden was not usually a leading lady, and her delivery may be why. Danton has dark charisma here but he's not around long. Rucker, as Hildy's boy pal, looks like a TV version of Robert Redford and is quite good, giving a well modulated performance that gives us a rest from the more dominating tones of the leads. Robert Easton looks appropriately unappealing as the rival cult leader, Julie Newmar is not convincing as the suspicious widow, and Skye Aubrey is bland as the heiress. You may recognize Bob Hastings (Carpenter in McHale's Navy, Kelsey the bartender in All in the Family) and Pat Morita (from The Karate Kid movies) in supporting roles. A big clue to the killer's identity is provided by Hildegarde when she notes that a supposed suicide note is fake because the uneducated writer of the note properly used a semi-colon—nice that they worked in a nod to her teaching days, far-fetched as it is. This was a pilot, like the 1972 Hound of the Baskervilles, for a TV series of rotating detective shows. Much as I usually like Arden, I don’t know that I would have kept watching these. Pictured are Arden and Rucker. [YouTube]