User reviews

This episode is like a breath of fresh air from the normal Kojak stories. It has bookies, the mob, a great actress who excels at portraying nervous, annoying women, a covey of amazing guest stars, some fantastic lines from Stavros and the rest of the squad. What more could you want? It seems that some people gave it a bad review simply because they don't understand Shelley Winters' talent at being a grating woman. Had it been Angie Dickinson, you can be sure they would have given it 10 stars and rave reviews.

The best Kojak episodes are those that involve a close friend or family member, just like this one. Telly always shines in these situations.

Silliness and slapstick mostly provided by Shelly Winters makes this the hands down worst Kojak episode. My wife and I are thankful we've gotten this far into the season to find a bad episode. Even the background music signals foolishness is about to be witnessed. The writers and director decided it was time to take a break from the serious themes, tight scripting, and polished acting. We must beapproaching the end of the series.

If Theo Kojak had any hair left on top of the dome he'd have torn it out with all the tsouris he has to endure for the sake of Shelley Winters.

Winters is the widow of Dan Frazer's brother who was also a cop and killed in the line of duty. So that gives him two reasons to look out for. Why he and the rest of the squad feel the need to keep Captain McNeill out of the loop I can't figure out.

Telly Savalas and the squad are also babysitting a real crybaby of a witness in Basil Hoffman and Winters gets involved in that.

The episode is a bit silly but you have to see what Winters gets involved in to earn a few extra dollars.

Who is this woman and why was she hired to ruin a good TV series..? Were the producers in kamakazi mode or did the mob have something on them and pressure them into it?

I thought that I had seen some bad episodes earlier but this one just takes the biscuit! It is (as some other reviewer has already noted) just the worst episode ever. In fact, it makes me want to change the previous one star reviews into ten star reviews as this episode is so superlatively bad that it makes all of the other bad episodes seem like amazing epics.

The ignorance of this character, the annoying plot, the repetition of the idiocy all makes this episode boring as hell.

Avoid at all costs.

While I agree with the other reviewers that this is the worst episode of Kojak ever broadcasted for all the reasons previously described. Let me also take the opportunity to mention that both Telly Savalas and Shelly Winters co-starred together 10-years earlier in the very good 1968 film "The Scalphunters" starring Burt Lancaster and Ossie Davis, that was directed by Sydney Pollack. Which may have been the motivation for this spectacularly unsuccessful re-teaming of these two once great movie and TV stars for this episode of Kojak.

Please, for your own sake, don't let this episode of Kojak prevent you from watching the far superior 1968 movie where Telly Savalas plays the leader of a band of outlaws with Shelly Winters as his prostitute wife. Unlike this episode of Kojak, both Telly's and Shelly's antagonistic chemistry is fun to watch in a far more entertaining movie with great writing and directing.

While I'll only give this episode of Kojak 3-stars. I give "The Scalphunters" a 10-star review. It's one of my favorite movies.