HTF DVD REVIEW: Matt Houston: The First Season

 

 

3/5

 

With the name of Aaron Spelling as one of the executive producers of the show, Matt Houston can’t help but be filled with beautiful people and be brightly colorful, slickly packaged, and as deep as a teaspoon. This set of twenty-three first season episodes proves to be just that: a fast paced murder mystery series with not much depth (not much chance of solving the mysteries either; clues really aren’t provided to allow the audience to play whodunit) but a lot of pretty people driving gorgeous fast cars, dressed in expensive designer duds, and careening around Los Angeles and its environs (there are chases in almost every episode) with solutions to the crimes in less than an hour per episode. Like Charlie’s Angels before it, Matt Houston is a simple pleasure which makes no apologies for its focus of style over substance.

 

Matt Houston (Lee Horsley) is a millionaire Texas business entrepreneur who enjoys playing private eye in Los Angeles. With his Girl Friday C. J. (Pamela Hensley) at his side and his Apple III “super” computer code-named “Baby” aiding him in research and solidifying his casework, his mostly glamorous female employees handle his other business ventures (along with main accountant Murray Chase), and Matt is free to investigate murders in a breezy, devil-may-care style that never takes itself too seriously. Each episode in this first season finds someone who’s either a friend of Matt’s or an acquaintance from his or C.J.’s past involved somehow in a homicide and often as the number one suspect in the murder investigation. Naturally, Matt steps in to see what he can turn up with his vast arsenal of luxury cars, his own helicopter, and best friend Lieutenant Vince Novelli (John Aprea) to offer official police assistance when Matt needs it.

 

Lee Horsley as the title character has some of the same kind of breezy nonchalance in his acting that made Tom Selleck such a mammoth star with Magnum P.I. combined with his aw-shucks Texas-twang that fashions a character who’s very endearing. The most attractive and intelligent Pamela Hensley is at his right hand with helpful advice and assistance (she also narrates the show) without any overt sexual tension between them (there is a bevy of beauties who are routinely thrown at Horsley for that). And John Aprea makes an appealing police foil for Houston’s more unorthodox methods. The other regulars during the first season, however, take up valuable time and contribute little to the show’s crime drama scenarios: good ol’ boys Dennis Fimple and Paul Brinegar are used for comic relief in a show that already has a seriocomic leading man, so they were wisely dropped pretty much around midseason with only fleeting appearances afterward. Likewise dropped after this season was Vince’s mother restaurateur Mama Novelli played by Penny Santon. She’s a fine actress, but her presence is completely unnecessary.

 

This being an Aaron Spelling production, the guest stars for each episode are plentiful. Among the familiar faces seen this season are Jill St. John, Art Metrano, Dale Robertson, Bradford Dillman, Heather Locklear, Herb Edelman, Stuart Whitman, Carol Lawrence, Vic Tayback, Britt Eckland, Mr. Blackwell, John Beck, Scott Brady, Dick Butkus, Forrest Tucker, William Smith, Janet Leigh, Cesar Romero, Dabbs Greer, Sid Caesar, James Coco, David Hedison, Hope Lange, Lloyd Bochner, Don Gordon, Gary Frank, Dorothy Malone, Hugh O’Brian, Cesare Danova (different roles in two different episodes), Tina Louise, David Cassidy, Troy Donahue, Norman Fell, Monte Markham, Jessica Walter, Beverly Garland, Gary Lockwood, Cameron Mitchell, Jeanette Nolan, William Windom, Dennis Cole, Diane McBain, George Takei, Richard Jaekel, Dorian Harewood, Stan Shaw, Barbi Benton, Sonny Bono, Pat Crowley, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Werner Klemperer, Janis Paige, Shelley Berman, Dick Sargent, Mary Ann Mobley, Alan Hale, Barbara Rush, Edward Mulhare, Stella Stevens, Ed Nelson, Don Stroud, Chuck Connors, Robert Alda, Dane Clark, Shelley Fabres, David Groh, Dawn Wells, Anne Jeffreys, Andrew Robinson, Ernest Borgnine, Jayne Meadows, Bo Hopkins, Ben Murphy, Natalie Schafer, Don Defore, Michael Constantine, George Chakiris, Robert Goulet, Renee Taylor, Fred Grandy, Tim O’Connor, Ron Ely, Lynn Holly Johnson, Richard Anderson, Terry Moore, Joseph Campanella, Denny Miller, Mark Shera, and Martin Landau.

 

Here are the twenty-three episodes contained on the six discs in this set:

 

1 – X-22

2 – Stop the Presses

3 – Deadly Fashion

4 – Killing Isn’t Everything

5 – Who Would Kill Romona?

6 – Recipe for Murder

7 – Shark Bait

8 – The Kidnapping

9 – Joey’s Here

10 – The Good Doctor (episode modeled on Ten Little Indians is the season’s best)

11 – The Rock and the Hard Place

12 – The Purrfect Crime

13 – The Yacht Club Murders

14 – Whose Party Is This Anyway?

15 – Get Houston

16 – The Visitors

17 – Here’s Another Fine Mess

18 – The Beverly Woods Social Club

19 – The Showgirl Murders

20 – Fear for Tomorrow

21 – A Deadly Parlay

22 – A Novel Way to Die

23 – The Hunted

 

The liner notes contain caveats warning of changes to the original programs and alterations in the music for the show. Devoted fans of the program will be able to better note than I what modifications have been made to the original broadcasts.

 

 

4/5

 

The program’s original 1.33:1 television aspect ratio has been faithrully rendered in these transfers. Apart from the series’ TV-movie pilot, these transfers are mostly very sharp (sharp enough for a viewer to denote easily the stunt doubles being used in many fight scenes and other stunts), and they feature deeply saturated color and excellent detail in close-ups. Black levels are good to very good, though as usual, stock footage for establishing shots is often faded or of poor visual quality, and there are occasional scratches even in the studio shot material. The TV-movie pilot titled “X-22” looks generally good, but there are places where print damage has added some momentarily distracting artifacts such as a yellow scratch that comes and goes throughout the movie or a sequence where there appears to be some emulsion deterioration leading to some serious spotting. The regular episodes have been divided into 6 chapters.

 

 

3/5

 

The Dolby Digital 2.0 audio track when decoded by Prologic is properly placed in the center channel. The show’s dialogue has been well recorded and is reproduced clearly, but sometimes music levels prove to be a trifle shrill and even a bit distorted in the upper fidelity registers. Overall, the sound mix is very typical of the era in which it was recorded.

 

 

1/5

 

Apart from the TV-movie pilot, each episode has a  ½ -minute preview promo which can be watched or skipped with each episode. There is also a switch in the menu that can turn on playing the promos for all of the episodes on the disc. (Sound levels vary with these promos, and some of them are at volume levels much louder than the actual episode.)

 

The first disc contains trailers for the various current Paramount procedurals, Nash Bridges, Star Trek on Blu-ray, and Walker Texas Ranger.

 

 

3/5 (not an average)

 

Not a great series but a lot of simple, innocent fun, Matt Houston comes to DVD looking very handsome. A richer feature package might have been desirable for the series’ first season release, but most fans should be pleased with the video and audio transfers offered here.

 

 

 

Matt Hough

Charlotte, NC