By Erin Free
In this regular column, we drag forgotten made-for-TV movies out of the vault and into the light. This week: the 1978 Season Three double episode telemovie opening of Charlie’s Angels: Angels In Vegas.
Okay, yes, we admit it – this is not actually a telemovie per se, but rather a double episode of a very popular TV series. It was originally broadcast, however, as an “event screening” on one night as the opening of the third season of the very popular TV series Charlie’s Angels. It is also structured and formatted so much like a telemovie that we have opted to stretch the guidelines a little and include Charlie’s Angels: Angels In Vegas Parts 1 & 2 (as it played later in syndication) in this column. This double episode even eschews the famed Charlie’s Angels opening credit sequence in favour of an episode-specific spiel featuring various Las Vegas locations, while the telemovie feel is even further heightened by the “Starring” credit bestowed upon big-name guest player Dean Martin in the opening sequence as opposed to in the more standard “Guest Starring” run at the end. So yes, it’s a stretch, but especially when you watch Charlie’s Angels: Angels In Vegas Parts 1 & 2 back-to-back (as original audiences did), this definitely looks and feels like a telemovie.
By its third season, Charlie’s Angels – which ran from 1976-1981, and was one of many popular series produced by TV legend Aaron Spelling – was a ratings behemoth and pop cultural phenomenon. The story of a private detective agency run by the mysterious, unseen Charles Townsend (voiced by later Dynasty star John Forsythe) and staffed by three glamorous young women (Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Jaclyn Smith, Kate Jackson) whose talents weren’t properly utilised during their brief tenure as police officers, Charlie’s Angels hewed to the classic “case of the week” format typical of other crime shows of the era. The show made mega-stars of its three beautiful leads, but the breakout of the trio was unquestionably famed poster girl Farrah Fawcett-Majors, who remains one of the essential pop culture figures of the 1970s.
The show’s popularity was tested with the departure of Fawcett-Majors at the end of Season 1 (in order to get out of her contract, the actress was bound to guest star in a further six episodes over the second and third seasons), but blonde, beautiful replacement Cheryl Ladd (playing Fawcett-Majors’ character’s younger sister) fit in well, and Charlie’s Angels continued on for four more seasons, with various other cast changes along the way. Cheryl Ladd’s place in the team was rock solid by the time of the Season Three opener Charlie’s Angels: Angels In Vegas, and the actress’s natural charm and charisma are in full effect in this double episode. Like nearly all instalments of the show, this one begins with a crime, namely the fiery, on-road vehicular murder of a Las Vegas showgirl. In the next scene, the lissom female detectives of Charles Townsend Private Investigations – Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith), Sabrina Duncan (Kate Jackson) and Kris Munroe (Cheryl Ladd) – along with their male associate Bosley (David Doyle), are being engaged by Vegas casino owner Frank Howell (Rat Pack legend and Vegas icon Dean Martin), who thinks he’s being targeted by an unknown enemy.
Per the winning Charlie’s Angels formula, the detectives then go undercover to crack the case. Smith shows off her decidedly average dancing skills in the casino chorus line, Ladd makes for a far more impressive singer (the talented actress enjoyed a sideline musical career) providing back-up to popular lounge crooner Marty Cole (well played by Bewitched’s Darren Number # 2 Dick Sargent, who definitely does not do his own singing), and Jackson gets the most dangerous gig as Frank Howell’s assistant, leading to some surprising May-December sparks between the unlikely pair. As usual, Bosley provides a little comic relief, this time as a casino valet. As various attempts are made on Frank’s life (with one leading to an exciting speed-boat chase), The Angels shake out the case, which involves rival casino owner Mark Haines (played by top-tier nasty bad guy Vic Morrow, who is characteristically menacing, and nearly steals the show with his brutish brand of machismo), his towering henchman Ed Slocum (Hill Street Blues’ Michael Conrad) and dodgy comedian Joey January (Herb Edelman is in excellent wise cracking form).
It’s a solid script from series creators Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, along with regular scribe Ed Lasko Jr., while director Bob Kelljan (a TV vet who also helmed the famous Count Yorga vampire movies of the early 1970s) keeps things moving at a brisk, non-nonsense pace while also making great use of his Las Vegas locations. This is Vegas of the 1970s, and it glows bright with that famous mix of glamour and sleaze that has now been replaced with rampant homogenised commercialism. There’s plentiful doco-style footage of the stage shows of the era, along with the glittering neon that paints Vegas’s night skies, and the gleaming poker machines and gaming tables that provide its casinos’ financial lifelines.
Like the best episodes of Charlie’s Angels, this highly entertaining double gives its three female leads – all endlessly charming in their own distinct ways – equal time, making them all essential to the cracking of the case, rather than fore-fronting one Angel over the others, as many lesser episodes did. While some episodes of Charlie’s Angels went decidedly over the top (Cheryl Ladd’s Kris wrestles an alligator in one episode, for instance), Angels In Vegas plays effectively at the more grounded end of the show’s spectrum, keeping things relatively plausible…at least within the confines of the series’ own frequently goofy sense of internal logic.
The quality of the guest stars in this double episode is also particularly high. Though Charlie’s Angels certainly played host to some big names (including the likes of Bert Convy and Bo Hopkins through to the entire cast of The Love Boat in a memorable crossover episode, and Sammy Davis Jr. playing himself in an equally essential installment), Dean Martin certainly sits somewhere pretty close to the top of the tree. Though not exactly firing on all cylinders (you can practically see him thinking about his pay cheque), Martin’s branded sense of laidback cool is firmly in place, and the Vegas milieu obviously fits the famed singer and actor like a glove. His romantic interludes with Kate Jackson are admittedly a little odd, but Martin’s scenes with the great character actor Scatman Crothers (who plays his assistant) are a joy.
As well as the aforementioned cast members, Charlie’s Angels: Angels In Vegas also features a brief, fairly inconsequential but still fun cameo from TV stalwart Robert Urich, who appears as Private Eye Dan Tanna, whose own Aaron Spelling-produced series Vega$ debuted a week after the Charlie’s Angels Season Three premiere. Further crossovers between the shows certainly would have been more than welcome (and far better than, say, the lame backdoor pilot Charlie’s Angels episode “Toni’s Boys” with Barbara Stanwyck), but were disappointingly non-forthcoming, with the cameo ultimately standing as nothing more than a savvy but slight piece of cross-promotion.
Infamously slammed upon first broadcast as “jiggle TV”, eventually recast as an early example of televisual female empowerment, and now set in stone as a true small screen pop cultural phenomenon (assisted, of course, by the various sequels, reboots and reimaginings that have popped up in the decades since on both TV and the big screen), Charlie’s Angels was always first and foremost fantastically entertaining, and Angels In Vegas is nothing less than the show at its absolute best, coming packed to the beautiful brim with incident, action, humour and glamour. A shot of pure nostalgia, this is a joy from start to finish.
Availability: Charlie’s Angels: Angels In Vegas Parts 1 & 2 is included in the Charlie’s Angels: The Complete Series DVD and Blu-ray box sets.
If you enjoyed this review, check out our other vintage telemovies Vanishing Point, To Heal A Nation, Fugitive Among Us, To Kill A Cop, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, Police Story: A Chance To Live, Murder On Flight 502, Moon Of The Wolf, The Secret Night Caller, Cotton Candy, And The Band Played On, Gargoyles, Death Car On The Freeway, Short Walk To Daylight, Trapped, Hotline, Killdozer, The Jericho Mile, Mongo’s Back In Town, and Tribes.
