The Garden Murder Case (1936)

The Garden Murder Case is another Philo Vance murder mystery though this time the famous detective is played by Edmund Lowe.

This case starts when a jockey (Douglas Walton) dies during a race after first giving a warning of his impending doom. As the case develops a rich business man and racehorse owner (Gene Lockhart) and the wife of an English major (Frieda Inescort) also die in mysterious circumstances.

The police suspect the businessman's niece Zalia (Virginia Bruce) though Philo isn't so sure and also has the hots for her. This is a neat little detective film involving the mysteries of hypnotism, double crossing and revenge.

Street Fighter (1994)

Movies based on video games are usually problematical (i.e. rubbish), Street Fighter however is quite good. Maybe because it is based only very very loosely on the game (much to the annoyance of many fans of the game).

It stars Jean Claude Van Damme as the head of a special forces unit (which includes amongst it's number Kylie Minogue - worth the price of a ticket alone for that casting) fighting brutal warlord Bison played by Raul Julia.

Julia makes the film to be honest, his portrayal of Bison is hilarious with many funny lines. The film is chock full of humour in fact, and plenty of weirdness too.

The plot? Well it involves Bison trying to take over the world with super soldiers and a mostly crew of video game characters such as Byron Mann's Ryu are trying to stop him. The plot is nothing special, it's just a fairly flimsy framework upon which to hang lots of one-liners and martial arts action on. It really shouldn't work, somehow it does.

Laffing Gas (1914)

Charlie Chaplin as a dental assistant? Well you can probably guess what this slapstick comedy is like! Laffing Gas (also known as "Laughing Gas" in regions where spelling was more important) comes with Chaplin's career still in it's fairly early stages. The genius of his later comedies isn't quite there yet but this film isn't bad at all.

Of course it doesn't really have much of a story, being more a series of slapstick stunts. Some pretty violent too involving bricks and plenty of punching. It is what is it, there is no pretense at high art in a film like this. It was designed to make people laugh and forget their worries for at least a short time, and in 1914 that was just what people needed.

A Shriek in the Night (1933)

A competent but unremarkable Golden Age style murder mystery starring Ginger Rogers and Lyle Talbot as rival reporters trying to investigate (and get under the nose of detective Purnell Pratt) a series of murders in a swish Art Deco apartment block in New York.

Rogers and Talbot are in a will-they-won't-they relationship as well as rivals. I'm not sure they have that much chemistry between them though.

The mystery is decent enough and the film is enjoyable, the film takes a while to get going though the ending is pretty intense. The acting and camera work is a bit stilted though. The best thing about the film is Ginger Rogers who shines as you would expect with some perfect comic timing. The film is quite light hearted for a murder mystery though that was quite common in the early 1930s.

The Lucifer Complex (1978)

The world has apparently been destroyed in a great war in the 1980s, and a survivor (William Lanning) lives on a remote island with just snakes and a mainframe with all of humanity's knowledge for company. He narrates the film, recounting the events that led up to the present.

These involve a nefarious Nazi plot to revive the Third Reich with clones of world leaders. Robert Vaughn is a secret agent sent to uncover the plot and defeat the Nazis, who in most cases are the most laughable examples ever.

The film has problems, the main being the way the story is driven by the narrator which just lacks any energy or suspense. Action scenes cut to yet another shot of the narrator looking bored at a monitor. The film also takes quite an age to get going. It's not all bad, as a campy bit of sci-fi neo-nazi evil plan cinema it is quite passable.