Fritz Lang’s final film, The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, marked his return to the pulp series he kicked off with 1922’s Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler. Like his 1933 entry, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, this one is not without some great sequences, but suffers from an overly convoluted plot and slow pacing. It’s well-directed, although not all that well-plotted.

Beginning with an assassination at a stoplight — utilizing a secret weapon that sends thin steel needles through human skulls — Thousand Eyes centers around the Hotel Luxor, where several recent visitors ended up murdered, baffling the local police (including Goldfinger himself, Gert Frobe, who can barely keep his pants up). The hotel rooms are bugged with cameras and have two-way mirrors, setting the course for an intriguing angle of voyeurism that never comes to be.

As with other Mabuse sequels, the good doctor is deceased, so it’s merely his “spirit” doing all the dirty work through other humans. While it sounds really cool, the movie isn’t even a quarter as exciting as its poster. As good as Lang was at what he did (see: Metropolis for the man at the height of his visual powers — and honestly, you must), the Lang-less, low-rent Dr. Mabuse vs. Scotland Yard so far remains my favorite in the German crime-cinema mainstay. The goofier, the better. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

A pre-giallo obscurity, Death on the Fourposter plops six couples into a bona fide castle for one swingin’ weekend. The place is a “mansion of pleasure” as far as the guys are concerned, but maybe not so much for the ladies: It has only one bathroom.

Co-directed by Jean Josipovici and Ambrogio Molteni, neither prolific, this Italian mystery also saw release as Sexy Party, which although silly-sounding, is absolutely apt. Perhaps the film’s embodiment of the sensual is Serena (Antonella Lualdi from Claude Chabrol’s A Double Tour), who livens up the shindig beyond mere dancing to jazz LPs on the hi-fi when she proposes a rather carnal take on Truth or Dare, such as betting the boys she can seduce them within seconds. If she can — and she knows she will because she’s pretty hot and knows that, too — their girlfriends must submit to the desires of another man there for a few minutes. Gambling has never been so erotically charged.

So, uh, where does the Death come in? Without revealing too much, Serena’s head games give way to a séance; it works, and not everyone lives to see the sunshine. Viewers’ unfamiliarity with the no-star cast works to the distinct advantage of this rough gem, in that conceivably, anyone could make an early exit. The lone exception might be John Drew Barrymore, star of the JD-flavored teenpic High School Confidential and father of Drew, but could you pick him out of a lineup? Not likely, even after exposure here. —Rod Lott

Get it at VCI Entertainment.

Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther comedies were just two years old and as many episodes deep when their bumbling-inspector bit was borrowed and slathered onto an Agatha Christie adaptation, of all things: The Alphabet Murders. The comedic approach well suits director Frank Tashlin (The Girl Can’t Help It), although it loses some intended panache by not playing out in color.

After addressing the audience as himself, a miscast but really trying Tony Randall (The Odd Couple) morphs into Clouseauian character as Hercule Poirot, Christie’s iconic detective: bald, Belgian, mustachioed fey — a tut-tut Renaissance man who carries a cane, bowls perfect frames and makes his own “ripping” cigarettes. The famed, finicky sleuth is called upon by the British Secret Service to solve a string of killings where an ABC book was left at the scene. The murderer seems to be working through the alphabet, too, first killing someone with the initials of “AA,” then “BB,” “CC” and so on.

Much to Poirot’s annoyance, the service has assigned one by-the-book Hastings (Robert Morley, Theatre of Blood) to tag along. Poirot spends nearly as much time trying to shake him as he does investigating. Somehow, La Dolce Vita vixen Anita Ekberg figures into the puzzle as Miss Cross, cooing such come-ons as, “Do you want my balloons?” Gulp! (Mind you, she’s holding actual balloons at the time, but still; Tashlin is, after all, the guy who had Jayne Mansfield bounce down a street with a milk jug in each hand, held at breast-level.)

A former cartoon director, Tashlin is in playful form as always, here taking to the camera as if it were a new toy, the limits of which he itched to test. He turns it upside down, aims it at mirrors, mounts it to a roulette dealer’s stick, places it within a bowling alley scoring table. In essence, he’s not afraid of having too much fun or letting the movie call attention to itself. Witness, too, the self-mocking cameo of Margaret Rutherford as Christie’s other classic clue-sniffer, the matronly Miss Marple, whom she played in four films.

As Poirot himself, The Alphabet Murders exercises a well-mannered, dry wit. It hums along to its own score, light on its feet. It’s just too bad it’s not all that funny — more of a passing amusement than anything else. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Excepting 1939’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, perhaps the most famous installment of the 14-film Sherlock Holmes series starring Basil Rathbone is its second, also from that year: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Not based directly on any one particular story from the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle canon, the movie does a great job of culling from Holmes’ overall world, to the point where it seems like it could’ve preceded Hound in theaters.

The joy here is watching Holmes (Rathbone) try to remain one step ahead of his archenemy, Prof. Moriarty (George Zucco, The Mummy’s Hand), who’s declared not guilty of murder by the courts, but only due to lack of evidence. Holmes possesses such evidence, but arrives a minute too late, leaving Moriarty free, since no man can be tried for the same crime twice. He vows to Holmes that he shall pull “the crime of the century,” and that our hero won’t be able to stop him.

A jewel heist is involved, and events culminate in a tussle atop the impressively moody Tower of London. Both Holmes and Moriarty reveal themselves as masters of disguise, suggesting an even match. As with its predecessor, Adventures is a Hollywood classic. It’s not for nothing that Guy Ritchie’s 2009 Sherlock Holmes reboot lifted the amusing scene in which the detective experiments with a fiddle and a glass full of houseflies. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Having never seen previous Alex Cross movies (Kiss the Girls, Along Came a Spider), I cannot comment on their merits. Being otherwise well-acquainted with Morgan Freeman, I’m inclined to believe he serves as a quiet yet commanding centre, lending his power to films that sorely need it (see also: Lucky Number Slevin, Unleashed, Hard Rain … the list goes sadly on).

Having never seen any Tyler Perry films (Diary of a Mad Black Woman, For Colored Girls, many others), I cannot comment on their merits either. I judge Perry solely as an actor, which, based on his Alex Cross performance as replacement Freeman, is akin to swapping Harrison Ford with Taylor Lautner, Sigourney Weaver with Tara Reid, Javier Bardem with a summer squash … you get the idea. In a film riddled with bad, Perry’s casting is the worst offender.

Based on the James Patterson crime novels — a series I am familiar with, beyond atrocious in style, plot, and writing ability — Alex Cross re-images the titular character as a young(ish) police detective with the never-proven-but-always-remarked-upon analytical skills of Sherlock Holmes and the never-remarked-upon-but-always-on-display charisma of unflavored ice milk. A maniacal assassin played by a shredded, illegal-MMA-fighting Matthew Fox (the only actor who realizes how awful the movie is, thus the only actor having any fun) has taken to leaving clues in abstract art sketches.

Cue desperate game of overfed-housecat-and-mouse, directed by hack maestro Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious) with all the passion of an insomniac with substance-abuse issues. Cohen is unable to wring even the minutest amount of pleasure from all the ridiculousness. The finale [SPOILER], a fistfight betwixt Perry’s doughy teddy bear and Fox’s zero-percent-body-fat hitman, should be at the very least a laugh riot, like pitting John Candy against Jason Statham.

The only true enjoyment comes (inadvertently) from Perry; while most of his scenes battle to out-dull each other, there are times when his performance nears camp classic value. At one point, while Fox taunts him on the phone, Perry literally huffs and puffs with rage. It’s hilarious, and a pointed reminder of Freeman’s unsurpassed ability to project anger through stillness. Freeman is the calm at the eye of a hurricane; Perry, for all his livid wheezing, barely summons up a breeze. —Corey Redekop

Buy it at Amazon.