"This Hollywood star is about to be murdered. Who is responsible for his death? Was it his jealous wife? The frightened prop man? The humiliated director? The supercharged press agent? The frustrated actor? Or was it someone else? Match wits with Ellery Queen and see if you can guess who done it!"
This episode contains examples of:
- Adaptation Decay: The script based on Ellery's novel is said to be not only horrible but getting worse with each revision.
- Horrible Hollywood: This episode had the Queens, father and son, witness this for themselves when they go on the set of an adaptation of one of Ellery's books. This being an Ellery Queen mystery, this trope's horrible aspects culminate in murder.
- Murder by Mistake: Happens to the first victim. The killer then tries again and gets it right. To elaborate: the star of an Ellery Queen movie is killed when fake bullets are replaced in a prop gun with real ones. Days later, the stuntman is murdered as well. It turns out that the stuntman was the target all along. The scene with the fatal gunshot was originally to have been filmed with the stuntman, but was changed at the last minute to feature the star instead; the killer had not received the most recent script revision.
- Not-So-Fake Prop Weapon: The man playing Ellery is killed by a gun that was supposed to be filled with blanks.
- Vehicular Sabotage: A stuntman is killed when the brakes of the car he is driving in a stunt are tampered with.
- Who Would Want to Watch Us?: Neither Inspector Queen nor Ellery is impressed with the movie's casting.
- You Just Told Me: Ellery has no idea why the murderer wanted to kill the stuntman, but acts like he does know in order to get a confession.
