As the title has it, the film is more concerned with the work half of that equation. A terrorist has planted a package of explosives on a train — or, as one character puts it, “Some joker’s been monkeyin’ around with your load!” — and Lyncort is called into action to diffuse the situation. Meanwhile, an […]
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Childrens Hospital: The Complete Fourth Season
The good news is that it’s as hilarious as it’s ever been. The bad news is that its title still lacks the necessary apostrophe. (Perhaps that’s only bad news if you’re a writer/editor.) How does it stay fresh and funny? By not adhering to any pesky distractions like “story arcs” and “character development.” Each episode […]
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FBI Code 98
No matter, really; I loved it all the same, so much so that I wish it had birthed a series of big-screen outings. (Instead, the idea eventually was rejiggered (sort of) into the long-running Efrem Zimbalist TV show, The FBI, and that doesn’t count.) Directed by Leslie H. Martinson (1966’s Batman: The Movie), the black-and-white, […]
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The Bowery Boys: Volume Two
For this four-disc follow-up to 2012’s set, Warner Archive again mined its vaults for 12 of the Boys’ Poverty Row features. The best way to describe their style is that it comes from the “why I oughta!” school of comedy. I’m unsure if it ever graduated, given exchanges like “How can you read in the […]
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Fast Company / Fast and Loose / Fast and Furious
For the record, the titles in question on this single-disc set from Warner Archive are Fast Company, Fast and Loose and Fast and Furious. Don’t let that third title make you believe they’re about racing cars; they’re not. They are about finding books. And that may be why neither you nor I have heard of […]
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The Tarzan Collection Starring Jock Mahoney and Mike Henry
For Mahoney, that’s 1962’s Tarzan Goes to India and 1963’s Tarzan’s Three Challenges. He may have been a fine father to actress Sally Field, but he makes for one dull Tarzan. This pair of adventures is notable for getting the character out of Africa and into Asia, yet only the latter sojourn is worth watching […]
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Philo Vance Murder Case Collection
Perhaps one reason for the character’s comparative absence among pop culture’s top of mind is that no one actor “owned” the role. In fact, across the six examples in this three-DVD set, not a single actor plays the metrosexual man twice; it’s like a George Lazenby switcheroo each time. Furthermore, two of them are arguably […]
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The Great Gildersleeve Movie Collection
In other words, think of him as the Frasier of the 1940s. As first glimpsed by us in 1942’s The Great Gildersleeve, Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve is an “overstuffed walrus” with a scary laugh and a deep, singsongy voice. He also serves as guardian to his orphaned niece and nephew (Nancy Gates and Freddie Mercer), but […]
Posted inMusic
Dollar for the Dead
Estevez is a cowboy everyone refers to as Cowboy — a deliberate nod to Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name of Sergio Leone’s beloved Dollars trilogy. The rootin’-tootin’ sharpshooter partners with greasy Confederate soldier Dooley (William Forsythe, The Rig), who possesses one-fourth of a map that will lead them to treasure. Only former NFL star/Radio […]
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Deathtrap
Here, Caine stars as Sidney Bruhl, a playwright who has just suffered his fourth straight Broadway flop. Much to the dismay of his wife, Myra (Dyan Cannon, who appeared in an equally keep-’em-guessing film in 1973’s The Last of Sheila), his solution is to kill Clifford Anderson (Christopher Reeve), the former seminar student who has […]