Ironside (TV Series) The Savage Sentry (1972) User Reviews

It's a dog eat dog business

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 29 November 2013]

Raymond Burr goes into the dog training business as he seeks the identity of who has been perpetrating a string of robberies at places that employ guard dogs. Worse that that the dogs are all trained and leased from Anthony Zerbe's dog training school so you can imagine that Zerbe is looking good as the perpetrator.

It's a bit more complex than that, but it's the dogs at Zerbe's school that is the key to the whole mystery. In fact it's a dog named Otto that Ironside picks from Zerbe's kennel and personally trains who apprehends the criminal.

That Chief Ironside for you, attacks every crime with dogged determination.

Ironside goes to the Dogs!

[TopekaBob · 7/10 · 17 February 2022]

As other reviewers have pointed out, this episode is similar to a later Columbo episode, featuring the use of trained dogs to commit crimes. Ironside ends up training and befriending a guard dog named Crazy Otto and then since it's Ironside, putting his life on the line based on his own theories of how the crimes work.

The music is so different in season 6, it will take some getting used to. Much more light, and they clearly were in love with their new score. There's a minutes-long segment of basically Ironside and crew hanging out in a museum doing nothing while the new music plays on and on.

Bo Svenson a Kansan? That's what they say he is here! His character is a real jerk, that's for sure, but they do say he's mentally disturbed. He watches rather happily when his dog rips up a guard.

Anthony Zerbe, the "zombie" leader from The Omega Man, continues the Ironside/Star Trek connection since he starred in a Star Trek movie: Star Trek: Insurrection.

Savage dogs being subdued (Ironside v Columbo)

[rms125a · 5/10 · 23 April 2018]

This was one of the less interesting episodes of "Ironside". The rather scummy villain played by Bo Svenson (was he really 6 feet 5 1/2 inches at the time as his bio claims; men so often lie about their height) has none of the erudition and elegance that Nicol Williamson did as the killer in the Columbo episode "How to Dial a Murder", yet both episodes deal with dogs bred to be savage by their masters, and how Ironside and Columbo figure out how to subdue them rather than getting mauled at their masters' command.

The two episodes are almost six years apart (September 21, 1972 v April 5, 1978) so I wonder if the Columbo writers got any incentive or motivation from the earlier Ironside episode.