User Reviews

No wonder there is a phobia called 'Coulrophobia'! With shows like "The Salinas Jackpot" (with murdering and robbing rodeo clowns!), films like "It" and games like "Twisted Metal", you can understand why a lot of folks hate clowns!

The show begins with some guys in clown makeup robbing the rodeo--and the clowns killing everyone in the cashier's office since one of the folks recognized one of them. Soon, Cannon is hired to track down the killers and return the money. Along the way, he meets up with the killers--and they nearly knock him off as well. Unfortunately, when he seeks help from a super-selfish woman, she's less than no help at all. Could her young son (Vince Van Patten) possibly help an injured Frank Cannon?

Overall, this is a pretty exciting episode of "Cannon" and, oddly, it becomes a bit like "Home Alone" later in the show! Well written and executed--it's yet another reason NOT to trust clowns! I was particularly impressed with Van Patten--he was a pretty good actor for a kid.

In the series pilot episode, Cannon was shot. Here in the first regular episode, he's shot again!! I never really watched the series, so I can't tell you if the trend continued--but I assume the number of times Cannon got plugged soon decreased (else wise he'd soon look like a piece of Swiss Cheese!).

CANNON was off and running and there were a few raised eyebrows about this episode as it was extremely violent. It begins with a payroll office full of people being killed by creepy clown thieves at a rodeo. Even by today's standards, this is rough stuff. This episode was filmed at Salinas, California, the actual site of an annual rodeo competition. Behind the scenes, the production crew would travel across California to highlight various towns and communities, sort of a travelogue and with some beautiful scenery.

Ken Trevey wrote this story, long associated with westerns such as the BIG VALLEY and LANCER. It turns out one of the killers may be the estranged husband of Sharon Acker, who lives on a desert ranch with her son, well played by Vincent Van Patten. Vincent, who later became a tennis star, was so popular that this episode alone recorded over a million views on Youtube!

Cannon goes after the baddies lock, stock and barrel and just like MANNIX, it's bruising stuff. We kids loved it! Writers on both shows began keeping tabs on each other. Cannon endures a grueling chase and he's shot, but the real tense moments come at the end, which is also very clever, without giving too much away.

There are some poignant moments between Bill Conrad and Van Patten, a sort of father and son relationship that grows. This would be a theme on the series as the years went on, showing the tough, scowling detective as a fatherly figure, too. That was a very nice touch.

Canadian director George McCowan tackled this one while directing THE MOD SQUAD at the same time. However, in all his years as a director at Warner Brothers/ABC and Columbia Pictures, William Conrad DID NOT direct a single episode. And he was a director of many classic tv shows, and movies such as the cult thriller, BRAINSTORM (1965). No doubt, he wanted to give work to others, and many from his WB years, which is commendable.

The opening is not for all tastes, but an excellent desert adventure nonetheless, thanks to Ken Trevey. September 1971 Episode 1. The official CBS dvd box set was released in 2008.

TV LAND revived the series in the mid 1990s with a lot of hype after William Conrad passed. However, it still took many years to get CBS to release all five seasons on dvd, including the two hour 1980 tv movie. In fact, METV was running only the first four seasons on Sunday afternoons, before the switch to late night with MANNIX and BARNABY JONES. Dedicated to all us 70s tv fans.