Been to The Blue Gay? You know, “that weird club,” where the drag queens put on big production numbers, like a skeleton act performed in total darkness, a breakdancing extravaganza … and also murder! When a transvestite named Nadia is found dead in his/her dressing room, Inspector Giraldi (Tomas Milian) is assigned to the case, because, as his supervisor says, “Sissies like your type!”

Welcome to Cop in Drag, an Italian crime comedy so broad, you could study its cartography. With the prime suspect being The Blue Gay’s prima donna, the cocaine-eyed Giraldi goes undercover in the club. Rather than don drag himself, he forces that indignity on his rotund sidekick, Venticello (uni-monikered Bombolo), the subject of many a slap.

About the height of the humor is Venticello being forced to eat cat food. (Hey, just because it’s the height doesn’t mean it’s funny.) As you’d expect, the majority of jokes fall into the category of “potential to offend,” with “fairy,” “fruit,” “fag” and other derogatory terms that don’t start with F batted about
by the people for whom we’re supposed to root. A subplot has Mrs. Giraldi mistaking her husband for a homosexual, and you kinda wish the bickering spouses would go back to shaking their newborn baby.

Apparently, the Giraldi series was a big hit among Italians, with the franchise numbering 11 entries. While Cop in Drag certainly is watchable and capable of generating a few smiles (mostly at its own expense), Bruno Corbucci’s effort made me long for the comparative smarts and subtlety of his brother Sergio’s Super Fuzz. Italy’s Tootsie, this ain’t. —Rod Lott

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Anyone going to Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid expecting William Powell to be anything like he was in The Thin Man is going to be disappointed. For one thing: He’s sober. Sadder than that: He sure ain’t married to Nora Charles.
 
His wife, Polly (Irene Hervey), doesn’t start out so bad, but she quickly starts to pick on him for turning 50, giving him backhanded compliments like how she doesn’t have to worry about his leaving her now. Little does she know Powell’s no peach, either. He mopes around for most of the film, but that would be okay if not for how he deals with it.

When he accidentally snags a mermaid (Ann Blyth) while fishing, he kidnaps her and takes her back to live in his lavishly deep fish pond right under his wife’s nose. Polly suspects something’s up, but she thinks he’s having an affair with a local hussy. Not that Polly has a lot of moral ground to stand on, since she’s been having secret lunches with the village cad.
 
It’s a depressing marriage you can’t really blame poor Powell for wanting out of, but it’s weird and creepy that he picks a mute, childlike (albeit heartbreakingly beautiful) mermaid to cheat with. When he seduces her by teaching her to kiss, it’s more Humbert Humbert than Captain Kirk. Although he goes back to Polly at the end — mermaids don’t have vaginas — you can’t help feeling that nobody gets a happy ending in this one.  —Michael May

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It was because of Scary Movie’s monster success that this other Scream parody existed, yet also skipped theaters and went straight to video. I never thought I’d say this, but perhaps Scary Movie did the nation a favor.

While Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th follows the same A-to-B pattern as Scary Movie, parodying many of the same scenes and even using some of the same jokes, it’s not as funny as its predecessor, which, quite frankly, isn’t exactly a laugh riot itself.

Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, looking pudgy and threatening to squeak out of her strapless blouses, has the Courtney Cox role as a sexpot reporter to Tom Arnold’s doofus of a security guard. It’s pretty sad when someone like Arnold makes the rest of the cast look like amateurs — including a pre-Dexter Julie Benz — but it’s true. Cameo appearances are put in by Academy Award winner Shirley Jones and, on the other end of the spectrum, rapper Coolio.

Aside from the obvious references to Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer and the entire teen-horror genre, Shriek also includes nods to entertainment as varied as Baywatch, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Porky’s, Reservoir Dogs (providing one of the film’s two true laughs), The Incredible Hulk, Mission: Impossible, Child’s Play and other movies far better than this one. —Rod Lott

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In The Munsters’ Revenge, the first made-for-TV movie from the beloved 1960s sitcom The Munsters, the Munster family gets its revenge. Aw, shit, I just spoiled it.

Anyhoo, the Munsters have an afternoon outing to the all-new Chamber of Horrors, where the wax figures include the Wolf Man, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Munsters themselves. However, the figures are actually robots programmed to embark on midnight crime sprees — the brainchild of one appropriately named Dr. Diablo (Sid Caesar, who jabbers and yammers as if members of the Great Depression generation may be watching).

After the city is terrorized, Herman (Fred Gwynne) and Grandpa (Al Lewis) are wrongly accused and thrown in jail. Their cellmate (Airplane! jive talker Al White) has an Afro comb and a bad attitude — he calls Herman “honky.” Post-escape, Herman and Grandpa try to convince the authorities of Dr. Diablo’s master plan to pull a heist of Egyptian artifacts on Halloween. The cops won’t have any of it, except for the young one (Peter Fox, Mother’s Day), but only because he wants in the pants of Marilyn Munster (Jo McDonnell, The Octagon).

Padded with a worthless trip to Transylvania and creating a running gag for in-town Cousin Phantom of the Opera (Bob Hastings), this act of Revenge directed by Don Weis (The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini) is pretty predictable, right down to where the commercials appeared. But it’s not without its amusing bits, such as when Herman destroys the police station because a bee flies up his sleeve. Or when Lily decorates their Halloween tree with bottles of poison. Or when Herman is shocked with 2,000 volts, causing steam to shoot out his ears. Why, yes, I was easily amused. —Rod Lott

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Not to be confused with the 2006 Christina Ricci flop of the same name, this Penelope is a charming star vehicle designed to exploit the fact that the camera loved Natalie Wood in a way we mere mortals will never know. Like many romantic comedies from the era, the film exists less as an excuse to tell a compelling story than to showcase its star in a never-ending series of fetching outfits. By that standard, Penelope’s a hit, with Wood never looking better.

Thankfully, the rest of the movie is pretty entertaining, too. Wood plays the title character, a bored banker’s wife whose previous attempts at creating excitement by stealing from her wealthy peers culminates in her robbing her own husband’s bank. She confesses her crimes to her tortured analyst (a pre-Producers Dick Shawn), who has little success keeping his love for her a secret. On her trail is clever police detective Peter Falk, who becomes just as smitten by his chief suspect as everyone else.

Directed by Love Story‘s Arthur Hiller, Penelope is one of those divine, cotton-candy concoctions that only could have come from late studio-era Hollywood. The script manages to be sly and occasionally sophisticated, while also remaining broadly funny. The fun really begins when Penelope confesses her crimes in order to save a falsely accused streetwalker, and no one believes her. This leads to a brilliant scene where Lou Jacobi and Lila Kedrova try to blackmail her by linking her to the yellow Givenchy suit she wore during the robbery (I told you the crime-com took her wardrobe extremely seriously), only to become frightened and confused when she’s thrilled to discover such evidence exists.

A flop when it was released, Penelope is much better than its vague reputation suggests. If it were simply a good excuse to watch its gorgeous star given the full-on Hollywood-glamour treatment, then that would be enough. That the result is genuinely fun to watch is just more icing on a perfectly decorated cake. —Allan Mott