My Partner the Ghost (TV Series) Murder Ain't What It Used to Be! (1969) User Reviews

Phantom Menace

[Lejink · 8/10 · 4 February 2023]

Another highly entertaining episode from my favourite fantasy TV show I watched religiously as a child.

A big-time American gangster comes back to England to do some "business" and hook up with his adult daughter and her giddy aunt at his country mansion. Only problem is, his former partner-in-crime who he murdered back in the 20's, but who's now a white-suited ghost like Marty, has followed him over here to coerce Jeff, through Marty, to have him killed in revenge.

He starts off by terrorising Jeanie and uses threats to her safety as well as good old-fashioned physical violence on Marty to get Jeff to help carry out his dying revenge wish, which he plans to do by enticing along a local gang-boss with his own grudge against the mobster, to do the deed.

Yes, you can see the strings on all the moving objects and the fight scenes are of the deep fake variety, but it's all great fun as ever with the pragmatic Mike Pratt as Jeff, the excitable Kenneth Cope as Marty and the lovely Annette Andre, my childhood crush along with Alexandra Bastedo from "The Champions" and Barbara Bain from "Mission Impossible", all joining in the fun. There's also an enjoyable larger-than-life (death?) performance by David Healy as the avenging Bugsy. Loved the freeze-frame final shot tribute to "Bonnie and Clyde" as well as the numerous references to the hit "The Untouchables" TV series of the day.

A great, fun episode, I think I almost enjoyed it as much today as I know I did back when I was nine years-old.

A Ghostly Vendetta

[sjdrake2006 · 9/10 · 20 April 2022]

Quite a coincidence that I decided to review this just the day after a fellow contributor!

I remember watching this when it was originally broadcast.

This was one of the few episodes which actually told us just a little about the world of ghosts. The original episode had established that postponing his move to the next world when asking Jeff to catch his killer, Marty had stayed longer than a day and was now forced to walk the earth for 100 years. This also sort of explained why we - and Marty - didn't run across ghosts more often.

In this episode, we do get to meet another ghost who has been around 3 or 4 decades longer than Marty and his 'spiritual energy' has developed a few new tricks.

Jeff is asked to act as bodyguard to his family by Paul Kirstner, who is by all accounts a sleazy, lowball crook running rackets in the US and UK. Kirstner and his family live in a mansion, so plainly he's got rich on his criminal activities. Despite or because of this, nobody seems to feel respect or affection to him, even his own family, whom it appears he neglects for long periods of time.

It transpires that not only is Kirstner nervous about a British gangster in London called Lacey, but that he is being haunted by a ghost called Bugsy Spanio, who is able to summon sufficient power to manifest and even carry out assassination attempts like causing chandeliers to fall.

Jeff, Jeanie (and Marty) move into the mansion for the job; but Jeannie shortly sees a leering spectre in her mirror and faints.

Marty rushes to the rescue and is soon introduced to said Bugsy (Smiler) Spanio, memorably played by the excellent David Healy.

Having been dead much longer than Marty, Bugsy is able to tote a ghostly machine gun and smoke ghostly cigars. It seems he has some power to move objects (telekinesis).

Bugsy is able to project a 'film' showing how in the roaring twenties, Kirstner (heavily made up to look unconvincingly younger) double crossed him after they had massacred a rival gang, shooting Bugsy down while his own gun was empty. Bugsy explains that he has been trying to kill Kirstner by way of revenge ever since but that Kirstner is aware of him and able to avoid his assassination attempts. Now Bugsy sees a chance to get even by establishing a hold over Jeannie and forcing Marty to get Jeff to kill Kirstner.

This raises a number of queries. Can ghosts hurt one another or indeed, interact at all? How come Bugsy gets a chance for revenge when he's no better than Kirstner himself, having just murdered a whole rival bunch of gangsters. Why aren't the just-gunned-down-in-cold-blood-gangsters' ghosts trying to get even with HIM? Is there punishment for murder in this world, in the next world?

Bugsy promptly gives us one answer. When Marty declines Bugsy's proposition, Bugsy punches his lights out. We see this partly from Marty's POV and partly from Jeff's. Jeff can't see Bugsy but he does see Marty jerking about until he passes out and disappears. Getting knocked out has very physical causes and as Marty is just spirit and not body it's hard to see how he can get knocked out.

Jeff also declines to play Bugsy's game once a recovered Marty explains to him. Bugsy sees that his isn't getting anywhere and fortunately for Marty, he finds another angle.

Bugsy asks that Jeff make a phone call to a number he provides along with a seemingly-innocuous message. The hapless Jeff goes along with this and shortly after Lacey arrives and takes the family hostage against Kirstner's return from business in town.

Jeff regains control when Marty stamps on Bugsy's foot then engages in a battle with Bugsy throwing objects at one another. Kirstner arrives to hold the British gangsters at gunpoint.

Marty seems to learn very quickly, though it's not really explained how he's duplicated powers that Bugsy took years to generate, nor why one ghost stamping on another's foot should hurt.

Kirstner ushers the gangsters outside into the garden in the failing light. Bugsy appears to Kirstner (and Marty) , silently firing his ghostly tommy gun silently- and ineffectively- for all he's worth. This distracts Kirstner enough to allow Lacey to draw a gun and shoot him dead.

We don't see Kirstner's ghost!

The programme doesn't attempt to sort out what happens afterwards. Lacey was seen to kill Kirstner but would presumably claim self-defence. Is his gun legal? We never find out.

The family is safe and nobody seems to regret Kirstner's passing.

As Jeff and Jeannie drive home, we see Marty toting his own tommy gun and cigar in the back and talking 'gangster-talk'!

.

Not a great episode

[ludlowit · 3/10 · 19 April 2022]

This is rather an odd episode, and one that doesn't really work very well. The basic idea, of the ghost of a gangster from the 30s still trying to get revenge on the man who killed him, is potentially quite a good one, but the details get rather confused. For example, why can't Bugsy (the spook) kill his victim himself? Why does he need to get Randall to do it? He seems to have considerable power over inanimate objects, so the explanation that his prey "has nine lives" isn't really credible. And by what chance does Kirstner, the intended victim, hire Randall to protect his daughter? The scenes where Bugsy, whom Randall can't see, beats up Hopkirk are pretty unconvincing. The supporting cast are badly underused, particularly the veteran actress Joyce Carey. Finally, I'd like to know what happened when the police finally arrived, to find someone dead from a ghostly bullet. Not a complete waste of time, but I won't be rewatching it any time soon.