When people say, “You couldn’t pay me to watch that,” they probably weren’t referring to Money Hunt: The Mystery of the Missing Link. All of 45 minutes, the made-for-VHS “original mystery movie” asked viewers to attempt to solve it for a chance to snag a $100,000 booty. One wonders if this tape is to blame for Dino De Laurentiis’ Million Dollar Mystery, a legendary bomb somehow more watchable even at double the running time.

Then halfway through his TV gig on Magnum P.I. as the mustachioed guy women didn’t want to fuck, John Hillerman hosts. He tells viewers they’ll need to decipher the clues to come up with three things: a region, a city and a safety deposit box number. What he doesn’t share until the end is they need to watch again to locate the phone number to call with the solution, which is like telling a patient who just had a root canal that a colonoscopy is needed immediately and, oops, the anesthesia tank is empty.

Cut to the “movie,” featuring Beverly Hills Cop’s John Ashton as chain-smoking private dick Cash Hunt. (Ha?) Amid a biz dry spell in a hot Hollywood summer, Hunt gets a case that leads him to the House of Liver restaurant, not to mention a few kuh-raaazy characters like a sexy waitress with a Judy Landers voice (Zane Buzby, National Lampoon’s Class Reunion), a patently ridiculous fortune teller (Ruth Crawford, 2009’s American Virgin) and a blind airline pilot (Newell Alexander, 1982’s Homework), all of whom want a gander at his office’s energy meter.

Despite a decent approximation of the rhythm of hard-boiled pulp narration, Money Hunt makes no sense. That may be by design to call attention to awkward clues and/or red herrings. Either way, Hunt’s as in the dark as we are, so with no true conclusion, it doesn’t work as a mystery. By comparison, the lamentable VCR game Ellery Queen’s Operation: Murder is The Maltese Falcon. (Wait, let’s not go that far. The Maltese Bippy.)

Now, just because the program also plays a self-parody doesn’t mean it works as a comedy; it works against it. Try as Ashton and Buzby might to sell them, the jokes are painful. They might have landed in TV’s Police Squad! (or its eventual Naked Gun movies) — for example, after Hunt says, “I think it’s time we lay all our cards on the table,” the camera fades to … yeah, I knew I needn’t go further — but director David Hemmings (yes, the Blow-Up actor) is neither Zucker nor an Abrahams.

As unappealing as the sweaty wife-beater Ashton wears throughout, Money Hunt features a great deal of hotcha-hotcha-hotcha innuendo, a brief animated dream sequence and end credits that include a list of helpful reference materials, from the Rand McNally atlas to The Dictionary of Calories and Carbohydrates. So who won? You, if you never watch. —Rod Lott

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Unlike fellow pulp gumshoes Mike Hammer, Sam Spade and Charlie Chan, Robert Leslie Bellem’s Dan Turner character failed to make much of a splash on the screen. Despite starring in hundreds of short stories, the Hollywood detective has been adapted only twice: by Bellem himself for 1947’s Blackmail, followed more than four decades later by The Raven Red Kiss-Off.

Incidentally taking place in the year of Blackmail’s release, Kiss-Off finds business at rock bottom for Tinseltown private investigator Turner (Marc Singer, The Beastmaster), reduced to locating lost cats. Then studio executive Bernie Ballantyne (Danny Kamin, Young Guns), “the meanest man in Hollywood,” hires Turner to keep tabs on his va-va-voomy mistress, Vala DuValle (Tracy Scoggins, Demonic Toys), while she’s shooting a new picture; in particular, Ballantyne fears his valentine is being blackmailed.

On the shoot, Turner runs into an old flame (Bethany Wright, Simple Men), and they immediately reignite with a heavy make-out sesh … until she’s shot dead by a gun poking through the curtains. Suddenly, Turner has blue balls two mysteries on his hands. Could they be related? Of course!

Alternately known as simply Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective, the flick was intended to kick-start a TV-movie franchise, all to be lensed in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where director Christopher Lewis had mined VHS gold with his shot-on-video terror trilogy of Blood Cult, The Ripper and Revenge. Unfortunately, his 35mm film noir found no favor with audiences still attuned to the neon vibe of Miami Vice, which had just finished its long run.

Stacy Keach’s Mike Hammer series also had gone off-air, so it’s possible by then, America was all fedora’d out of period-piece P.I.s who didn’t also have a soundtrack album by Madonna. As Turner, Singer overcranks the dial of pulp-dick affectations to the point which Lewis should’ve reminded his leading man they were making a pastiche, not a parody. As his co-stars prove, it can be done without overdoing it.

That’s not to say The Raven Red Kiss-Off is no fun. Although clearly hampered by a small budget and Lewis’ limitations, the screenplay by knowledgeable first-timer John Wooley (co-author of several Forgotten Horrors volumes) casts a spirit-appropriate shadow and offers the occasional inspired sequence — chief among them, an inventive chase through an amusement park, with Turner hopping from ride to ride to escape his pursuer.

Showing up for a scene or two apiece are Clu Gulager, Arte Johnson, Paul Bartel and Eddie Deezen. Can you guess which one of the four is completely incapable of toning down his shtick to fit into place? —Rod Lott

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Congratulations! Welcome to the free, three-week Caribbean cruise you’ve won for you and your guest! Don’t remember entering that contest? That’s okay, it’s not like this is some elaborate setup to murder you or anything! That’d be crazy, right?

We’ve got swimming, shuffleboard, table tennis, homicide, dancing, drinks and more! If you should happen upon a photograph of you and your fellow winners, I implore you to think nothing of the “X”s grease-pencilled over some of the faces! That’s just our way of keeping track of who wants decaf, and how delightfully odd to suggest it’s some sort of assassin’s to-do list! Ha-ha, now I have heard everything, good sport!

Don’t believe us? Just ask Tom Bosley! After all, you loved him as the dad in Happy Days, like he was your very own, so he’s bound to tell you the truth! Oh, dear, he appears to have taken a sudden nap. With the breadth of activities, who can blame him? Let’s just step over him and leave him rest. Come back to him later, okay? I’d say you could bend Kate Jackson’s ear, but she’s on her second honeymoon, and you know what they say: “If this boat’s a-rockin’, we do not wish to be disturbed, please.” I may have that wrong. No matter.

Instead, ask Polly Bergen. She’s not busy since her slimy husband’s out chasing young tail on the ol’ poop deck, if you know what I mean! What’s that? No, I’m pretty sure she’s dozed off as well. Maybe field your inquiry to our ship’s captain instead? He’s the one with lamb chops — on his face, not his supper plate, you silly! Or maybe our brand-new temporary doctor who’s here on super-short notice for no dubious reasons whatsoever! He’s the one who looks like Michael Constantine. Come to think of it, golly gosh, that is Michael Constantine! Well, whaddaya know …

Our cruise is produced by Aaron Spelling. Yes, the same gentleman who gave us The Love Boat! So you know you’re in good hands — very good hands that would never, ever tighten themselves around your lovely throat, so please just get such thoughts out of your mind and feel free to reach out to any member of our staff, from your bartender to your murderer. Beg pardon? No, I clearly said “your purser.” Perhaps you should visit the aforementioned doctor for a complimentary cotton swab?

All right, then, away we go on our Death Cruise. Excuse me? “Depth,” I said “depth,” because we’re on the ocean, see, where the waters can run as deep as a knife wound. Trust me, you’re perfectly safe or may you be struck down by the pointed arrow from a well-aimed crossbow. I mean, me, may I be struck down, not you — oh, heavens no. All ashore who’s going ashore! —Rod Lott

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En route to a ritzy boarding school, naive good girl Stefanie (Diane Franklin, Better Off Dead) says to the cabbie, “I hope the girls are friendly.”

They are not. In fact, most are total bitches, simply because Stepfanie comes from a farm, not a trust fund. Despite being there on a scholarship, she’s abruptly put in her place as their inferior; after all, what kind of weirdo brings a board game? Headmistressed by It’s a Wonderful Life legend Donna Reed (in her final movie role, albeit made-for-TV), the institution teaches French, horseback riding and … homicide!

In templated one-by-one fashion, the girls are killed, each in a different way, at the hands of … well, therein lies the mystery. Needless to say, CHiPs’ officer Larry Wilcox investigates.

I’ll say this for Deadly Lessons: The reveal of the killer’s identity arrives as an absolute surprise. Clearly, this was ABC’s attempt to grab Voorhees-craving viewers, yet the limits dictated by Standards and Practices cripple efforts by director William Wiard (This House Possessed) to achieve a passing grade of terror. As a result, the bloodless movie belongs to the genre of suspense, however light.

The characters are stock, but for a story like this, they should be. So I’ll also say this for Deadly Lessons: Wiard and casting sure had good taste, snagging not only the likable Franklin, but others on the verge on breaking big — notably, Ally Sheedy, Bill Paxton, Rick Rossovich and, in the role of Fat Girl Who Eats Four Dozen Donuts, future Bart Simpson voice Nancy Cartwright. —Rod Lott

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Now that circuses have been shamed out of existence, members of the next generation may be curious what they missed. On the basis of Ring of Fear, a good third of which is circus footage, not a damn thing.

As he does in the Abbott and Costello jungle jam, Africa Screams, top-billed circus mogul Clyde Beatty plays his charisma-free self, bringing (per the credits) “the entire Clyde Beatty Circus” to town. The citizens are agog at Beatty’s arrival, as if they’re getting a Costco.

Paying particular attention to the news is Dublin O’Malley (Sean McClory, The Day of the Wolves), Beatty’s former “ring director,” now in a mental institution following an unexplained incident in Iwo Jima. Dublin talks to a photograph of Beatty’s trapeze artist, Valerie (Marian Carr, Kiss Me Deadly); once upon a time, she returned Dublin’s now-delusionary pining.

Informed Valerie’s now married to a “top aerialist,” Dublin punches his way out of the asylum and, hopefully, back into her heart. (It’s tough to blame the poor chap once we finally see Valerie in all her animal-print voluptuousness.) Dublin’s plan is to get rehired with Beatty’s circus … and then sabotage it from within by rigging the big cat rope to force “accidents,” preferably fatal. For help, he recruits Twitchy (Emmett Lynn, Skirts Ahoy!), an illiterate clown.

As injuries pile past the point of coinkydink, Beatty’s right-hand man (Pat O’Brien, Billy Jack Goes to Washington) hires an investigator, bestselling mystery novelist Mickey Spillane, playing bestselling mystery novelist Mickey Spillane. Never mind asking a practitioner of detective fiction to solve a crime is like soliciting Fifty Shades of Grey author E.L. James for a blowjob, because Spillane has more screen presence than any cast member, save Carr.

Produced by John Wayne, this CinemaScope programmer is directed with indifference by James Edward Grant (the Duke’s Angel and the Badman) and improbably by the legendary William Wellman (1937’s A Star Is Born), sans credit. All the pedigree can’t make up for three-ring crowd shots bumping next to blurry stock footage, ridiculous dialogue (“You stupid, unconscious blithering idiot, you!”), weak acting by lead McClory and weakest acting by Beatty, whose bewildering response to a death is a toothy grin and shake of the head.

Also unable to save Ring of Fear from a pedestrian fate? The Thing from Another World’s Kenneth Tobey, any number of Flying Wallendas and Pedro the Kangaroo. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.