I was worried, but the Thin Man series ends swell with a jazz-themed return to the formula and the kind of comedy that made the series great. Song of the Thin Man has Nick and Nora back in New York, again trying to solve a murder in order to prove the innocence of a friend. In this case, the friend is Phil Brant, who owns a gambling ship and has an argument with Tommy Drake, who leads the club’s jazz band. When Drake turns up dead in Brant’s office, Nick grabs his cocktail shaker and goes to work.
Instead of Nick drunkenly and good-naturedly suffering the company of snooty rich folk, Song shakes things up a bit by having him drunkenly and good-naturedly suffering the company of hepcats. It’s brilliant, because his reaction to both is nearly identical, but the hepcats are infinitely less irritating (and so, more entertaining) than wealthy snobs. Also, Nora’s even more of a treat than usual once she gloms onto the hepcats’ lingo and starts using it correctly, much to Nick’s befuddlement.
Nick Jr. appears again in this installment, but he’s about 10 or 11 years old and not played for cute anymore. Dean Stockwell (TV’s Quantum Leap) plays him and carries his own as a bona fide member of the wisecracking family. At bedtime one night, he asks for a story. “No story for you tonight,” Nick says, “You’ve got to get some sleep.” Says Stockwell, “But your stories always put me to sleep,” delivering the line almost as perfectly as William Powell reacts to it.
The Thin Man series is famous for presenting marriage as something that people might actually want to do. With Song of the Thin Man, it does the same thing for parenting. —Michael May
I’ve never seen a horror movie that makes me feel as anxious as having to walk past a group of unchaperoned teenagers, regardless of the situation or location. One on one, I have no problems with the adolescent set, but gathered together, I find they can be as terrifying as suddenly running into a pack of feral dogs. Hollywood has long understood the fear we “old fogies” have for those whippersnappers, and has been too happy to exploit it for excellent dramatic effect.
It takes about one class for King to get on the bad side of these ruffians, led by a gifted maniac played by Timothy Van Patten (
Herschell Gordon Lewis, aka the Godfather of Gore, has still got it! By “it,” of course, I mean goofy jokes, amateurish acting, not-much-better direction, loads of gross-out shots and generally dirt-cheap production values, but if it all adds up to pure entertainment, who cares? 
Producers want to bring the hit cable series to network prime time, but not without changes that greatly upset host Jackie (Brooke McCarter, 
An odd bird, this 
This gives way to a rollicking, stab-a-rific caper — perhaps even a love story between a lisping child and the demon to end all demons, bonding over harming innocents that include a pregnant woman, a newborn baby, a blind man, Dougie’s own father and many more. An elderly lady gets hanged to death on her porch by Satan, and Dougie, for whatever dipshit reason, thinks it’s the funniest trick he’s ever seen. Ditto for Satan squeezing Jenna’s generous breasts in her Renaissance slut costume. (“I can see your boomies!” says Dougie with a disturbing chuckle.)
When Hall’s sister (Ava Gardner in an early role) gets married, The East Side Kids decide to fix her new house, yet they mistakenly enter the one next door that’s rumored to be haunted. It’s not — although the best scenes involve them thinking it is — but rather occupied by a group of Nazis in the cellar who print propaganda on “The New Order” (not the band) and are led by Lugosi.