A woman’s leg turns up in a dumpster. Her arm, in a mailbox. Her head, on the beach. And so on. Because the first discovered limb bears a unique snake tattoo matching a model’s photograph on a pornographic puzzle, L.A.’s finest go neck-deep to investigate The Jigsaw Murders.

Leading the charge is Sgt. DaVonzo (Chad Everett, Airplane II: The Sequel), a veteran cop and veteran alcoholic, and his young-pup partner, Detective Greenfield (Michael Sabatino, Immortal Combat). Their sights soon zero in on slimy shutterbug Ace Mosley (Eli Rich, MurderLust), who — it just so happens — has shot nudes of DaVonzo’s wannabe-actress daughter (the Sharpie-eyebrowed Michelle Johnson, Blame It on Rio) … and she might just be his next target.

One of those mainstays in the VHS rental peak, The Jigsaw Murders comes from Roger Corman’s Concorde Pictures; as such, it hits the right blend of sleaze and stupidity. It also works in spite of itself, coasting on Everett’s extremely easygoing TV-star charm and the mentor/mentee relationship between DaVonzo and Greenfield. Although hardly original, their buddy-cop pairing is so likable, it merits a series and mitigates the movie’s short-lived status as a mystery. To be clear, we only get the latter. But we also get a chase-cum-shootout on a miniature golf course.

The movie represents a transition film of sorts for writer/director Jag Mundhra, as it bridges his horror roots (Open House and Hack-O-Lantern) and the erotic thriller genre he helped ignite (Night Eyes, Last Call, Wild Cactus, et al.) the very next year. B-movie enthusiasts should look for short bits from Yaphet Kotto, Michelle Bauer and Brinke Stevens, only one of whom plays a sandwich-eating coroner with clothes. —Rod Lott

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German director F.W. Murnau made many popular films in his heyday, including the silent-era vampire flick Nosferatu, which still shocks today, almost as much as it did in 1922. With many of his films finally being remastered and released, however, there’s bound to be a few low points, one of which is the mostly tiresome silent film The Haunted Castle.

Going into this, even though, yes, there are a few sequences that prophesize what was to come in many of his later films, know that really nothing in particular is haunted, and the “hunting party” is in much more of a chateau as opposed to a castle. The plot of the movie revolves around the sudden arrival of the notorious Count Oetsch at the castle, a creepy fellow that everyone believes murdered his brother … or did he?

Thankfully, a mystery-solving monk shows up to help solve the crime, but not before a few dream sequences are had, including one where a tiny chef eats cream and smacks his boss in the face — which, when I write it out, is probably sexual.

Either way, like I said, it’s an interesting watch if you’re more a student of film who has the patience, but I’m pretty sure most other people will just switch the channel over to Murder, She Wrote for a far more engaging whodunit and a probable guest appearance by Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

The Blu-ray from Kino Classics also has the Murnau flick The Finances of the Grand Duke, which I haven’t seen, but imagine it’s got dour men in white cake makeup making exaggerated faces, probably while looking at bills and notices, when a title card comes on the screen that reads “Sweet mother’s pearls, Reinhold … the Grand Duke’s finances are not very good … I have an idea, let’s have a picnic!”

End of Act One. —Louis Fowler

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After a whirlwind meeting-cum-courtship, blonde beaut Lilli (Abbey Heller) marries curiously mustachioed sculptor Emile Duvre (Robert Parsons), then goes straight from exchanging vows to embarking on a Honeymoon of Horror. Considering what follows, she should have had him sign a prenup, preferably one containing the phrase “promise not to kill you.”

After the couple lands in their love nest, those within their circle of friends begin to perish. The new Mrs. Duvre is not immune to murder attempts, either, most notably by gravity doing its thang on a giant metal globe objet d’art suspended above their swimming pool, because of course. And because all artists are weirdos with posses of weirdo pals, there is no shortage of suspects. Besides Emile himself (whose Euro accent signals viewers that he is not to be trusted), the culprit could be his mistress (Beverly Lane), his leering brother (Escape from Hell Island’s Alexander Panas, who also wrote the underwritten screenplay), a fellow sculptor who is blind, a spry dwarf and, last but not least, Hajmir (Vincent Petti), Emile’s turbaned live-in servant.

It is Hajmir who tells Lilli, “Madam is no doubt confused” — a statement applicable to anyone who dares watch. Befitting its later alternate title of Orgy of the Golden Nudes, the Florida-lensed indie is more interested in asses of lasses than knots of plot, despite the utilization of Monroe Myers (Adam Lost His Apple) as, more or less, Exposition Cop. Speaking of investigation, the movie is more mystery than horror, but because the ad man in me recognizes the power of alliteration in audience appeal, I’m letting that misnomer slide.

One could draw a direct line between this film and Blood Feast, and I don’t just mean on a map of the Sunshine State. The former traffics in the garish gore that Herschell Gordon Lewis pioneered one year prior, but with less panache (yes, panache) and considerably less in delivering what’s promised on its bill of goods. Honeymoon marks the lone shot at directing for Irwin Meyer, who plowed greener pastures as a producer of made-for-TV movies (e.g., 1998’s exclamation-theirs Legion of Fire: Killer Ants!), and one can see why.

Still, it’s not a vacuum of entertainment. Where else — in today’s society, especially — will one hear a woman speak the line “Yes, but he’s just a minor sex maniac” as a point of justification? —Rod Lott

Get it at Something Weird Video.

Another of producer Harry Alan Towers’ travelogue-esque tax write-offs masquerading as a creative project (see: Five Golden Dragons), the overly punctuated Code 7, Victim 5! casts five-time Tarzan Lex Barker as Steve Martin — neither the wild-and-crazy comedian, nor the Godzilla journalist, but an American private dick.

Apparently having left the “ain’t gonna play Sun City” pledge unsigned, Martin is summoned to South Africa by copper magnate Wexler (Walter Rilla, Dr. Mabuse vs. Scotland Yard) to investigate why the millionaire’s faithful butler has been murdered, and by whom — well, other than by men wearing cheap, Bozo-esque party masks. I’m not spilling, but the answer might have something to do with an old group photo of POWs, in which both Wexler and his no-longer-loyal servant are pictured.

With utilitarian direction from Robert Lynn, he of the rare espionage anthology Spies Against the World, the Technicolor Code has a lot going for it, beginning with a cold-blooded murder and a car chase down the winding roads that hug the cliffside — and that’s just the first 10 minutes! While we’re on the subject of huggable curves, because no Towers production of the era would be complete without offering two handfuls of lovely ladies, Martin gets a love interest in Wexler’s Danish secretary, Helga (Ann Smyrner, Reptilicus).

As if all those escapist elements weren’t enough, we also get a bare-knuckle brawl (in which Martin’s hair color magically changes from shot to shot, as Barker’s stunt double earns his pay), a shootout in underground caverns, a gorgeous underwater sequence (in which our scuba-geared leads are menaced by spear guns and a shark) and — for local flavor — a mondo-style bar scene featuring swarthy and shirtless gentlemen performing ill-advised tricks with needles and swords to the delight of drunken Caucasian tourists.

Narratively unremarkable, the film nonetheless delights as it plays — as should every international whodunit that cares enough to stage an ostrich stampede. —Rod Lott

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Until the Rocky Balboa and Rambo reboots saved his career, the aughts were not a good time to be Sylvester Stallone. Arguably, his nadir would come with D-Tox, aka Eye See You, a $55 million film deemed so toxic, it opened on one screen in the United States: at a discount theater on the fringes of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. I live there, and I have no idea why OKC was deigned the appropriate dumping ground. Hadn’t we suffered enough?

Detective Jake Malloy (Stallone) can’t seem to crack the case of the Saw-voiced serial killer who’s on quite the cop-slaying streak and whose M.O. is a power drill to the eyeball through your front door’s peephole. While Malloy is at the murder scene of the mystery man’s latest badged victim, the killer is making it personal by going after Malloy’s fiancée (Dina Meyer, Johnny Mnemonic). The ensuing grief sends our Italian Stallion toward the bottle, then over the frickin’ edge: He slits his left wrist in a suicide attempt. (In subsequent scenes, however, his right wrist is bandaged — perhaps a sign how little the filmmakers cared.)

To kick the shakes and get his life back on track, Malloy is sent to a Very Special Rehab Facility; run by a grizzled ex-cop (Kris Kristofferson, Big Top Pee-wee), the former military complex caters only to cops and is located in what seems to be a perpetual blizzard. But no matter how remote the facility, Malloy is unable to escape his demons, because when his fellow residents start showing up murdered, it’s clear the killer has followed him there.

Okay, so maybe it’s only clear once our hero spots “ICU” written on the underside of a corpse’s eyelids.

The closest Stallone has gotten to making a horror film (at least intentionally), D-Tox marked the sophomore feature for Jim Gillespie, who lucked out and broke big when his debut, I Know What You Did Last Summer, rode the immediate wave of the pop-culture tsunami that was Wes Craven’s Scream. Slasher elements are in place, right atop the machinations of an old-fashioned whodunit in Agatha Christie’s patented one-by-one mode, but the work simply does not work. (Two years later, Renny Harlin’s Mindhunters would fare far better utilizing a similar setup.) It’s a shame, too, because Gillespie was gifted with a ridiculously strong supporting cast for this type of film, including Tom Berenger (Major League), Jeffrey Wright (Source Code), Stephen Lang (Don’t Breathe), Charles S. Dutton (Alien 3), Courtney B. Vance (Office Christmas Party), Polly Walker (John Carter) and Robert Patrick (The Marine). Curiously absent among that list: suspense. —Rod Lott

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