Touches You

Thanks for the memories!

Sadly Over-hyped

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The Streets of San Francisco was created by Edward Hume and produced by Quinn Martin. The series stars Karl Malden, Michael Douglas, Richard Hatch and Darleen Carr.Filmed on location in San Francisco this series follows Lt Mike Stone (Karl Malden)the wise and decent older detective who's paired with the young and eager Inspector Steve Keller(Michael Douglas). The pair work well together and over the years become close friends too. The stories are interesting and there's lots of action too but the highlight of the series and the real key to it's success is the friendship between Stone and Keller.Malden and Douglas have great chemistry and you believe they like each other, which helps you believe the friendship between the pair. Stone and Keller are completely dedicated to the job but make time to have some fun to help them cope with the dangers and dark times they often face out on the streets. They regularly tease one another and bicker but always have each others back.The series ran from 1972 to 1977. Douglas left at the end of season 4 and went on to become as bigger star as his father Kirk. Season 5 saw Stone paired with another officer Inspector Dan Robbins(Richard Hatch). Hatch is good in the role and season 5 has some good stories,unfortunately the relationship between Stone and Robbins is nothing like the one between Stone and Keller and it feels like something is missing, the series ended after the fifth season.Many famous actors and future stars make guest appearances in this including Martin Sheen(Karl Malden guest stars in an episode of Sheen's series The West Wing), Edward Mulhare, Joanne Linville, Dean Stockwell, Brock Peters, Andrew Robinson and Leslie Nielsen.Darleen Carr made regular appearances as Stone's daughter Jeannie. The pair have an interesting relationship, Stone raised her on his own following her mothers death and Jeannie always calls him Mike instead of dad(she only calls him that when she's worried about him or something bad has happened).The pair are not just father and daughter but best friends too and Malden and Carr have lovely chemistry.The other star of the series is of course the city of San Francisco itself and there are many beautiful shots of the city and the bay. A great series that's highly recommended.

This couple of cops are mythic, Detective Lieutenant Mike Stone and his partner Inspector Steve Keller are not walking but rolling the streets of San Francisco chasing not petticoats or petty criminals but real hard core criminals who are ready to kill anyone, including their husbands or friends, though essentially weaker people, for a handful of dollars, for sums that today sound small but in those days sounded great like a few hundred thousand dollars or half a million dollars. It seems with these criminals the risk they take is more important than the profit they make. Yet they make that profit, or at least try to, they run their risks and they get caught by the "villainous" cops who are only there to get their heads, or at least their mugs, on their walls over their fireplaces, if they have a fireplace, because what's more these cops are poor and badly paid. Why on earth do they track boys and girls who make more money in one month than they do in a couple of decades? Because these cops are perverts and that is obvious from the very start. You have to be a pervert to arrest a criminal and find pleasure, pride and even fame in doing that. But these cops are bringing to the profession another dimension, a human and even humane dimension. They are moved into action by the suffering of the people, by the social dimension of their cases, by the emotional and even sentimental sides of their situations. There is always a lot of love lost somewhere that is found again, or a lot of love that could have been lost and is retained. There is also a lesson about Pearl Harbor and about all kinds of jingoism or sectarianism or segregation or racism, or whatever that makes life and humanity dirty looking and mean sounding. Those two cops seem to be trying to create harmony, to be scoring some music and tuning all the voices of the big social choir to the one single pitch that could please human ears and from time to time divine ears, but not too much nor too many. The 50 odd minute episodes are not too long but are short enough to be packed and dense and that is an advantage, a good asset. The structure in four acts and one epilog is also rather nice though of course the format is becoming a limitation little by little. Some more complex cases cannot be solved in four little acts and one short epilog and fifty minutes is rather short on TV. But that was the format on TV in these late 60s and early 70s when color TV became popular. My first color TV in 1969 with Bonanza, Mission Impossible, Love American Style and so many other programs. That sure was another time and television was not an isolating tool yet but rather a machine around which people gathered and enjoyed some time together every night. A tremendous leap forward toward a culture for all and a social reflection for everybody and with everybody. So these programs had to be popular and police drama had to be close to people, close with a city like San Francisco that has always had a reputation to be friendly and easy going, with simple people who are severely hurt and maimed by crime and with some other people who suffer tremendously because of the consequences of the actions of criminals. That reveals though another type of courage, the courage to suffer in order to bring about justice and simple people who are the victims of such crimes are often willing to help justice rather than to get a vengeance. And Bonanza was the same and Mission Impossible was the same and Clint Eastwood and his spaghetti westerns were the same. It is not so much the cops themselves that bring peace to the community but the victims of crime that do and when one becomes a stray cat of justice and wants to be a vigilante or a pistolero or a gunslinger, then the whole universe reacts and brings that lost sheep back into the corral. OK Corral of course and more than Dead or Alive we want the criminals alive for the court and the judge and the jury. This series is still quite viewable and decent, and even emotional and at times slightly poignant. Quite different from the police dramas of today that are even shorter and definitely a lot gorier.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID

This was definitely a good show and it really fed off the dynamic of the older cop (Malden) and the younger cop (Douglas). The chemistry between the two was what made the show great and it would eventually be the springboard to the later success that Michael Douglas would have in later years. Also, this show is definitely overlooked when it comes to classic police dramas. Too bad it had to come out in an era when the super cop shows dominated the television landscape.

Republic Pictures' five released VHS videos which represent eight different episodes are, I hope, the first of a complete series release. In recent years, "Streets" has been relegated to the pre-dawn graveyard of Indie and cable television stations, edited down to allow for more ghastly, no-budget local ads (trade schools, lawyers, and the like). Nowadays, low self-esteem broadcasters plaster their logos and moving promo messages along the bottom of the as if the program is an interruption of their commercials. So, what a treat to see these classic episodes without all of these distractions. Although popular enough to run for five seasons, it never received the credit it deserved -- none of the hype of a "Charlie's Angels," for example. It's too bad that Michael Douglas didn't stick with the show. His performances in "Streets" and "The China Syndrome" are among his best. I'm crossing my fingers that he'll consider returning to a follow-up "Streets" later in his career, taking the senior detective's role that Malden held in the original. "Streets" always had tight scripts, good plotting, and interesting characters -- even if they pandered to stereotypes a little. Way ahead of its time, gay themes are treated with surprising tact and good taste. In the episode "Harem," guest star Rick Nelson plays a gay pimp for female prostitutes (a novel idea in and of itself). The word "gay" is never used, but Steve (Douglas) simply tells Mike (Malden) that, "he's not exactly what you'd call a ladies man."The two-hour special "Thrill Killers," is perhaps the most interesting release. Patty Duke Astin plays a not-too-thinly disguised Patty Hearst (a headline story at that time) who takes a whole jury hostage and begins killing them one by one. It's a relief not to have to wait a week to see part two. The least interesting of these releases is "Dead Air," starring Larry Hagman as a radio talk show host (reminiscent of Bill Balance's Feminine Forum, an innovative show at the time). The studio scenes are completely unrealistic and the killer can be guessed before the end of Act 1. Unfortunately, none of these eight releases includes an episode from "Streets" most famous director, Richard Donner ("The Omen" and "Lethal Weapon" series.) Maybe they'll release some of his episodes on DVD with a director's commentary? Also missing is what I consider to be the best episode of the series, "Mask of Death," which has an amazing performance by John Davidson as a female impersonator.