When VHS was all the rage, the VCR game was, alas, not. But dammit, they tried — some more than others. Spinnaker Video appears to have put all its chips of effort toward the kick-ass cover of Ellery Queen’s Operation: Murder, because the tape’s half-hour whodunit is half-assed at best.

Highly intelligent in the novels and also highly likable in the Jim Hutton-starring TV series of the 1970s, the Ellery Queen of this “You-Solve-It VCR Mystery Game” is just a smug jerk. Played by Michael Solomita, the unofficial detective enters the Doorn Memorial Hospital office of Dr. Minchen (Don Dill), who sparks immediate regret in viewers with this greeting: “Ellery Queen, by thunder! What on earth brings you down here? Uh, still snooping around?”

Indeed, Queen is, asking questions about rigor mortis in diabetics, to which the doc replies in a near-singsong, “Just a fortunate coincidence, I happen to have diabetes on my mind this morning.” Totally normal response.

It’s all related to Queen’s latest case, concerning the hospital’s comatose benefactor (Helen Cuftafson) being strangled to death before surgery, but after she changed her will. From a playboy little brother to a mad-scientist researcher, likely suspects abound, each thrown at you in time-heavy exposition too quick and too dull to properly absorb. At eight points in the story, a clip-art screen informs you to “PICK a RED or BLUE CARD MARKED EVIDENCE.” I can’t imagine anyone having the patience to play this game more than once.

Although based on a real Queen novel, The Dutch Shoe Mystery, the catchpenny Operation: Murder is amateurishly acted and staged. At the beginning of my professional journalism career in the early 1990s, I was assigned to observe a murder-mystery party at a local bed-and-breakfast. Quasi-cosplaying, the attendees all looked the part, but had little to no idea of what they were supposed to do. Across the parlor, I spotted an elderly woman with a stooped back shuffling my way. Clutching a tiny notebook and pencil, she looked me in the eye and said only three words: “Got any clues?” I replied I did not, and she wandered to the next person in vicinity and asked the same. That’s what Operation: Murder is like, except mercifully shorter. —Rod Lott

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At the Starlite Theater’s current production — one with guillotines and pie-throwing — cast changes abound. That’s because two showgirls have been murdered in bed in the middle of the night. The culprit could be anyone, from the show’s star crooner, “top sensation” Rolo Borel (singer Rolo Puente), to its diabetic janitor, Quasimodo (Norberto Aroldi).

Investigating is Inspector Hector Ibáñez (Aldo Barbero, The Curious Dr. Humpp), the only way he knows how: by putting his girlfriend, Sofia (Gloria Prat, Blood of the Virgins), in mortal danger by having her go undercover as a dancer in the show. Love you, honey!

The beast of The Naked Beast is actually fully clothed — and in vampire regalia, complete with a mask that looks like a big scab. The showgirls are often starkers, however, which may be the main reason to give this film from Emilio Vieyra (Stay Tuned for Terror) your attention. The mystery is slight and easy to solve; the horror elements, even slighter. Still, at 84 minutes, it’s nigh impossible to wish ill. —Rod Lott

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Two years after her spouse’s suspicious death, Lisa Mandel (Patty Shepard, My Dear Killer) invites a dozen friends and family members to spend the weekend at her spacious country estate. As only happens in the movies, no one’s calendar holds a conflict, so everybody shows up. Why has she gathered them? To find out which one of them murdered her husband! What’s on the menu? Exposition!

In classic Agatha Christie fashion, every guest has a motive; Lisa simply needs time on her dime to suss out the culprit among the parlor of suspects. Also in classic Agatha Christie fashion, that task becomes markedly easier as they begin dying — but not until after the one-hour mark, oddly enough. You could call this Spanish-language film And Then There Were Ninguna. Croquet is played; “elegant gigolos” are discussed; affairs are consummated; allegations are hurled. Eventually, one of them sticks.

Featuring Paul Naschy in a small role as part of Mrs. Mandel’s help, The Killer Is One of Thirteen comes from Javier Aguirre in the same productive year he and Naschy collaborated on Count Dracula’s Great Love and Hunchback of the Morgue. Although by no means a bust, this project is the least of the three, with Aguirre unable to crack the code of how to handle such an expansive cast; we get to know only a few characters — and barely at that, with the possible exception of Shepard’s widow — while others don’t even register from scene to scene. The film is no great mystery, but we’ll call it good enough. —Rod Lott

In the woefully mistitled Too Scared to Scream, residents of the fancy-schmancy apartment building The Royal Arms in New York City start turning up stabbed to death. Investigating are the grizzled Lt. DiNardo (Nightkill’s Mike Connors, who also produced) and his ineffectual, incompetent young partner (Fatal Attraction’s Anne Archer in a feather-duster hairdo), with a near-invisible sideline assist by a token minority (Leon Isaac Kennedy, Hollywood Vice Squad).

Suspicion quickly falls on the Arms’ odd doorman (Ian McShane, John Wick) who takes his job so seriously that he quotes Shakespeare in everyday conversation and refuses all sexual overtures from the elderly widow upstairs (Play It as It Lays’ Ruth Ford, in her final role). He also lives with his wheelchair-bound mute mother (six-time Tarzan mate Maureen O’Sullivan) and delivers intellectual insults: “You, sir, are a vulgar, feverish little clod.”

While that setup and its marketing materials promise a slasher film, Too Scared to Scream isn’t. Instead, it’s a mystery. More specifically, it’s an old-fashioned police procedural — the kind likely to feature (and does!) an unfazed medical examiner smoking a stogie while handling disembodied limbs. The only film directed by The French Connection villain Tony Lo Bianco, it’s light on true suspense, but likable enough, as it’s fun to watch DiNardo go through the motions of feet-on-the-streets detective work, to witness Archer ridiculously disco-dance in her living room, and to see McShane marinate his mama’s-boy part with more panache than it deserves on paper.

Incidentally, if not ironically, it’s written by Neal Barbera and Glenn Leopold, the duo behind The Prowler, one of the more notorious slashers. That they didn’t give Too Scared the same bloody treatment is a shame only in the sense that the mask on the poster never appears. Lo Bianco compensates with a terrific cast that includes Jaws mayor Murray Hamilton, Home Alone dad John Heard, Creepshow bitch Carrie Nye and a couple of naked ladies more than willing to let his camera leer. —Rod Lott

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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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