Certainly releasable, but only a goatee hair above watchable, the horror film is co-produced by Machete man Robert Rodriguez (no relation), who also wrote the original screenplay — “original” only in terms of it being rewritten, as there’s nothing new you haven’t seen 100 times before. To less adventurous viewers, I suppose the story’s being […]
mystery
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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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White flight
Photo: Diane White You’d be hard-pressed to find a more tightly knit band than White Mystery. Like Jeff the Brotherhood, but with one less Y chromosome, the Chicago garage-rock duo proves that the siblings who play together, stay together. “A brother and a sister, you kind of have this nurturing relationship,” singer and guitarist Alex […]
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The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
The film fills in the details of Holmes’ three-year spell of assumed death — “Only the facts have been made up,” teases a title card — by pairing the great detective with the great psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. Arguably more notable is that Solution is the first dilated-pupils depiction of Holmes, the only to tackle head-on […]
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The Mad Magician
Just as he’s about to hit the big time with his super-secret buzz-saw trick, however, his show gets axed and his boss claims proprietary rights to all of Gallico’s stage tools. As all mad magicians as wont to do, Gallico snaps and kills the guy by — and this fits the theme — decapitation via […]
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Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XXV
While none are classics, the four episodes collected here make for a terrific representation of the comedy series’ range, as our host (Joel Hodgson or Mike Nelson, depending on the ep) and his trusty robot friends rip bad movies a new one from the corner of your screen. They can lampoon no-budget sci-fi (1986’s Robot […]
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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 […]
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The Ice House
The corpse is located in the titular locale on the grounds of an opulent estate occupied by three women whom the townspeople refer to as “the butch beauties of Streech Grange.” The home is owned by Phoebe Maybury (Penny Downie, Invictus), whose husband disappeared a decade earlier — a case that remains unsolved. She lives […]
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Perry Mason Mysteries: The Original Warner Bros. Movies Collection
But curiosity is curiosity, and interest is interest, so when Warner Archive issued an MOD DVD set of them in Perry Mason Mysteries: The Original Warner Bros. Movies Collection, I just had to check it out, your honor. Warren William (who also played another famous detective, Philo Vance, for the big screen) stars as the […]
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Felt up
Rock bands and puppets: two peas in a pod, right? Sure, these art forms might seem contradictory on the surface. But on Friday at Opolis, the spectacle of Quintron and Miss Pussycat — half puppet show, half concert — will take this notion and obliterate it. The New Orleans-based husband and wife bear a unique […]