Remember when Eddie Murphy used to be funny and he did that routine about how Hollywood doesn’t make horror movies with black people because they’d leave a haunted house at the first sign of suspicious goings-on? Well, now that Murphy is no longer funny, they made that movie. And he must no longer be black, either, because he goes in and stays in that haunted house.

Based on the Disneyland ride, The Haunted Mansion casts Murphy as a real-estate salesman hoping to score big when the opportunity arises to put a multimillion Louisiana mansion on the market. En route to their vacation, Murphy and his clan check the place out. It’s inhabited by butler Terence Stamp and — zikes! — ghosts!

Skeletons come alive, apparitions appear everywhere, Jennifer Tilly’s disembodied head resides in a crystal ball, and yet nothing of significance happens in the entire hour and a half. Nothing but ass-numbing, migraine-inducing pain. This one makes any of the nonsensical Pirates of the Caribbean look like Best Picture material. This also makes Murphy look like the world’s biggest sellout.

Poorly written and utterly soulless, it’s not fun, not funny and not worth a single minute of your time. —Rod Lott

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Near-albino Brian Kerwin (clearly the Jeff Daniels of his day) has to join a military academy after getting expelled from high school. The year is 1967, where there’s a long-haired hitchhiker on every corner and cars have bumper stickers reading “GOD IS ALIVE … AND HE LIVES IN A SUGAR CUBE!”

Kerwin and his roomies smoke banana peels, dump manure confetti on a gym full of dancers, and meet a hippie artist with a fake parrot on his shoulder wearing a button that reads “STONED” (the parrot, not the artist). One of Kerwin’s roommates is traumatized by trains, so he tries to derail one by smearing pats of butter on the tracks.

Stephen Furst (Flounder from Animal House) sits on a toilet filled with gasoline and it explodes. While home for Christmas vacation, Kerwin throws flaming tires from a moving car with elfin pal David Caruso, and his mom cooks their family dog in her new microwave.

If you’re looking for a story arc, don’t; that requires having a story first. The soundtrack boasts actual hits from The Box Tops, Steppenwolf, The Mamas and the Papas, The Rascals and Booker T, among others. Getting Wasted is a framework rather than an actual movie, but then, most movies don’t have a grade-school drug dealer, now, do they? —Rod Lott

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This overly rushed and poorly dubbed sequel to AIP’s hit Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine is inferior to that film, but still a load of fun, if you can stomach all the sub-Laugh-In moments and constant winks at the camera.

In Dr. Goldfoot & the Girl Bombs, the great Vincent Price reprises his role as Dr. Goldfoot, who manufacturers a mess of hot bitches in gold lamé swimwear in his secret lab. This time, he’s programmed these barely clothed vixens to kiss — and thereby detonate — the world’s NATO generals. The plot pretty much ends there and gives way to a series of loosely connected, probably scripted-on-the-spot wacky shenanigans involving teen idol Fabian and his efforts to foil Goldfoot’s plans for world domination.

Price actually gets two roles in this one, but he’s no Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove, that’s for sure. Laura Antonelli provides a highlight by performing a seductive go-go dance in her negligee. Providing some “comic relief” in a film full of it is the Italian team of Franco and Ciccio, who may remind you of Martin and Lewis … but only after being kicked in the head by a team of horses.

Mario Bava had the unfortunate assignment of directing these two numbskulls — who make Roberto Benigni look perfectly restrained — in what had to be the most terrifying time in his long horror career. Faults and all, its 79 minutes will fly by, but you’ll still be left with the aching feeling that it’s missing a certain something the original had … ah, yes: Susan Hart. Meow! —Rod Lott

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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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