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

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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

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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

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Two Men in Manhattan is as uniquely New York as Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver or Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon; it just happens to made by the French. Opening with a brassy jazz score — as American an art form as any — un film de Jean-Pierre Melville captures the Big Apple on the brink of Christmas, aka the most wonderful time of the year … unless you happen to be France’s United Nations delegate Fèvre-Berthier.

Absent without explanation for an otherwise unmemorable U.N. vote, Fèvre-Berthier is nowhere to be found, so night-owl journalist Moreau (Melville himself) is tasked with finding him. Taking sleazy photographer Delmas (Pierre Grasset, Rififi) as a booze-soaked sidekick, Moreau presumes that Fèvre-Berthier can be located with ease if they can find the man’s mistress, whomever she may be.

One of the most vital artists of cinema’s French New Wave, Melville (Le Samouraï) shoots the black-and-white film with a tourist’s eye — a focused, determined one vs. easily distracted. On the night of Dec. 23, his Moreau and Delmas run all over the City That Never Sleeps, from tavern to bordello, from the warm studio of Capitol Records to the bustling heart of Times Square. Two Men in Manhattan makes for a pleasurable whirlwind of a roundabout, to a point that the picture’s noir mystery seems almost incidental — an excuse to showcase the still-nascent metropolis. It just so happens that our guide, Melville/Moreau, calibrates audiences’ collective moral compass during the excursion. —Rod Lott

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In Milan, a middle-aged man by the name of Berzaghi (Raf Vallone, 1969’s The Italian Job) is not only widowed, but the sole caregiver for his mentally handicapped daughter, Donatella (Gillian Bray, The Bod Squad). Although she is 25 years old, her mind is stuck at 3; she can’t even put on a brassiere without her father’s help. Innocent flirting on her part is misread as sexual invitation from strangers, so Berzaghi must lock her up in their apartment when he goes to work.

One day, however, he returns to an empty home. The doors and windows remain locked; there’s no sign of forced entry. He fears the worst, as he should: that she has been abducted from his well-intentioned prison to one that has only the worst intentions in mind.

Enter the sinus-infected police captain (Frank Wolff, Once Upon a Time in the West) and his younger, shaggy-haired partner (Gabriele Tinti, Black Emanuelle), who have a feeling Donatella may have been kidnapped into a prostitution ring, so they tour the area’s buy-before-you-try bordellos.

The mystery of Duccio Tessari’s Death Occurred Last Night is not whether Donatella will be found among the whores, but who will find her and/or her captors first: the police or Berzaghi? The increasingly desperate father doesn’t think the authorities are acting fast enough, so he takes matters into his own vengeful hands.

Tessari (A Pistol for Ringo) directs this grim yet gripping polizia picture with a straightforward objective that makes its story timeless: suspense. So do the colorful supporting players who weave in and out of the story, not always by their own volition, including a suicidal “Negro prostitute,” a former pimp stooping to a less respectable career (that of car salesman) and a teddy bear with an ugly face. However, the show belongs to Wolff and Vallone; the former for portraying how a cop’s professional life infringes upon his personal one, and the latter for showing how an honorable man in his position gives up his own life to focus on that of his only child. —Rod Lott

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