Just One More Thing: Any Old Port in a Storm

March 09, 2026

Just One More Thing: Any Old Port in a Storm

Notes and screenshots for Any Old Port in a Storm: Originally broadcast on Oct 7, 1973, starring Donald Pleasance as a man who'd kill for a good glass of wine, Gary Conway as his genetics-defying brother, Vito Scotti, Robert Donner, Peter Falk as Columbo, and a special appearance by Dana Eclar as the man called Falcon ("screee!").

"A winemaker and connoisseur kills his half-brother in a fit of rage to prevent him from selling the family winery to a merchant company, and Lt. Columbo has to be very creative to solve this one."

-IMDB Summary

"Poor Adrian Carsini (Donald Pleasance). When we meet him in “Any Old Port In a Storm,” all he wants is to run the family winery, play the big shot with his wine nerd friends and decant the days away. When Carsini’s playboy half-brother threatens to sell the winery’s land to the Two Buck Chucks up the road, he flies into a rage, mostly killing him with a solid blow to the head, then finishing the job by suffocating him in the wine cellar while jetting off to NYC for the weekend. Columbo coincidences his way into the case when it turns from a missing person gig into a homicide. Steven Goss (Drunk Columbo) joins in to talk about a solid episode from a solid season."

-RJ's episode summary

Listen to the original podcast episode here:

Episode 52: Liquid Filth! with our guest Steven Goss.

Any Old Port in a Storm

Season 3, Episode #2

Director: Leo Penn

Writers: Stanley Ralph Ross, Larry Cohen

We’ve run two episodes in relative nearness to one another wherein Columbo finds some level of sympathy -- and even admiration, can we say? Something more than mere friendliness -- with the episode’s killer. Obviously, there are a few other candidates -- McGoohan’s Col.Rumsford in By Dawn’s Early Light is a figure with which Columbo obviously felt some kinship, and a measure of pity which he also seemed to feel with Dunaway’s Laura Stanton in All In The Game. (I think a lot is made of the apparent warmth which many pick up in the relationship between Ruth Gordon’s character and Columbo in Try and Catch Me, but I’m in the camp that while Columbo might have sympathized with Abigail Mitchell, he didn’t actually like her)

Pleasance’s Adrian Carsini, however, Columbo seemed to love like a brother. There’s something to be said for the motive to a murder, and Columbo can respect the idea of protecting an institution, an idea, a legacy. He just can’t respect it so far as to let a murderer walk free, which puts an end to Carsini’s sudden new lease on life.

And Pleasance, an actor with a real gift for playing the simp, even though he’s best known for roles as vindictive or evil characters. Blofeld does not simper like Carsini. It’s a pretty impressive range to pull them off with equal aplomb. I think we all came out of the latest episode of the podcast regretting that Pleasance never made a second appearance (although I’m gonna ram his Mrs.Columbo episode through the RJ-wall if I gotta lose a limb to do it).

Oh, hey, did you know that Pleasance flew more than sixty raids into Axis territory during World War II and spent a year in a German POW camp? Do you know what he did in that camp? Acted in plays. That’s having acting down deep in the blood.

Below: Look. How. He’s. Holding. THE. GLASS.

The philistine.

Following: A survey of the excellent supporting cast of Any Old Port In A Storm: Robert Donner as “The Drunk,” Frank Puglia as the janitor, George Gaynes as “French Man” (according to IMDB), Monte Landis and the beloved Vito Scotti as “wine steward” and “Maitre D’,” John McCann as “Officer” and part-time astrologer Joyce Jillson as Joan Stacey (with, I think, Reid Smith).