Police Woman S03E21 “Bondage”, aired March 1, 1977, dir. Arnold Laven, wri. Irv Pearlberg & Frank Telford
Police Woman was a 1974-1978 cop show that starred Angie Dickinson as Sgt. “Pepper” Anderson, set in Los Angeles. Episode “Bondage” involved Pepper infiltrating the porn industry.
The opening scene is set in an old-timey looking room, with a woman tied up by the wrists, standing. A maid (in a completely ahistorical uniform) comes in to help her “Countess”. (The background sound of a camera whirring betrays that this is a performance.) A man in period-ish wig comes in, dismisses the maid, and rips the back of the Countess’ nighgown. (No actual nudity, of course.)
Manny the Director: “And cut!”
Manny steps in and butters up the female star, still tied, then tells the man to get ready for the next shot.
Manny: You are looking real good, Dolores, real good.
Dolores: These ropes are pretty tight, Manny.
Manny: Realism. Relax, babe. A couple more shots and we’re finished.
[…]
Manny: Now we’re going to pan over to Brigg. He’s going to be fake-hitting you. That’s when you skuh-ream!
Dolores: You sure he’s going to fake it?
Manny: Hey…
Dolores: I mean it, Manny, he’s a freak. He really is. He gets his kicks out of hurting people.
Marcia (Maid-Actress): She’s right. You remember what happened. You know the last time.
Manny: He won’t even come close. I guarantee it.
Dolores screams on cue.
Cut to Pepper and her partner riding horses. They find Dolores’ body in the woods. (Yet another dead sex worker.)
The usual police procedures identifies the body via her arrest record, and she was killed a couple of weeks ago.
Meanwhile, Tony, the mob-affiliated producer of the film, decides to take advantage of their dead star’s notoriety in promoting their film. Tony tells his right hand guy to find a replace for Dolores and, implicitly, keep Marcia from talking to anybody.
The detectives’ search Dolores apartment, and find both pills and heroin paraphernalia. They also meet her brother, Matt, who didn’t know she was dead. Matt mentions guys got her into “that movie.”
Matt: Hard core stuff, you know. Sadomastochistic [sic] film. It’s been shown all around town. Tonight, Josephine.
Pepper and her partner go see the movie. They pass people on the way out talking about how she was killed to make the movie. (This likely a reference to Snuff (1976), which was publicized as a true snuff film.)
Guy: Hey, it’s just a shock.
Girl: Well, they couldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. I mean, they got laws.
The theatre’s marquee includes a blow-up of the news story about Dolores’ murder.
In another conversation, the partner says that there was no way Dolores was killed as part of the movie. The violence in the film was done with makeup and special effects. He does consider the possibility that the killer was “inspired” by the movie. “Life imitating art.”
Pepper meets Ben, the deputy city attorney, over lunch and asks him to ask a judge to ban Tonight, Josephine. He asks her to make her case.
Pepper: This picture is an instruction manual in sadism. Any number of people could look at it–
Ben: They might get ideas.
Pepper: Right.
Ben: Granted. ‘Your honor, if we follow that line of reasoning, we would have to ban Hamlet because some lunatic might try to feed poison to his mother.’
Pepper: Ben, Tonight, Josephine is not Hamlet.
Ben: ‘Your honor, I submit that this film– it might be shoddy, sadistic, degrading. It might be all of these things and worse, but it can be likened to Hamlet in one very vital respect. Legally, on the basis of higher court decisions, it is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, under the right of free speech. And the defense rests.’
Pepper: So that’s how it would be, huh?
Ben: You knew that all along, Pepper.
Pepper: Damn.
The defense of sadomasochistic media comes down to only the First Amendment, and no consideration that something like this might have any artistic merit.
The detectives grill Manny and his crew.
Manny: Look sargeant, you can make a couple of bucks making porno movies for the freaks. Somebody’s going to get the money. I might as well get it. That don’t mean I’m a freak.
The sound tech says he didn’t meet with any of them as they were “all filth”, including Dolores. Brigg, the male actor, says he and Dolores didn’t see each other.
Brigg: I’m a sadist, on camera. Off camera, I’m not.
Pepper (wrapped in a towel) meets with Marcia in a steam bath and says Brigg must have done it. “I mean he was a real sickie.” She also links to Tony, the backer, who owned the house where it was shot.
Tony has Brigg killed and the body dumped, complete with a suicide note.
Pepper wants to infiltrate Tony’s operation so that they can get to the mystery house. She meets with Manny and auditions as “Ginger”. He takes pictures of her (fully clothed).
After the usual cop show plot machinations, car chases, foot chases, witty banter, etc, Pepper gets pulled into the porn operation. They shove her into a windowless van and taken to Tony’s house. Meanwhile, the cops try to figure out where she went before she has to do anything sexual.
Manny explains that this film will be about “Roman orgies” and shows her two women who will be celebrating the “feast of Venus”. They’re wearing short togas and pantyhose. Manny sends her to another room to get into costume, where she tries to escape. For no apparent reason beyond fan service, she changes into her pink mini-dress costume.
Tony looks through her purse and finds the phone number linking her to Marcia. He cancels the shoot and throws everybody out.
Pepper finally breaks the window with a chair and escapes. It gets a bit Gothic, with a woman in a filmy dress fleeing a mansion at night, pursued by men who mean her harm.
Pepper goes back to the mansion and tries to call for help, but Tony intercepts her and gives a villain speech, explaining he killed Dolores by accident because she wanted to quit.
In the closer, Pepper mentions she got Marcia a job as a restaurant hostess.
“Bondage” was made in the “jiggle TV” era and there are a number of elements that are solely there to show off the star. This is a bit discordant with the story’s condemnation of sadomasochism as worthless but protected by law, the people who make it as “filth” and the people who view it as “freaks”. The episode is full of “damsel in distress” scenarios, both in the film being made and the episode itself.
