Jon and I watched this movie last night, the original, the one with with Martin Balsam, Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau, not either of the two remakes. The movie probably doesn’t need one more review, but here’s the music that plays over the opening credits:

NOTE: The book review that follows was first posted on this blog on 20 August 2015. The movie review that follows after that was written today. Also note that the first eight comments were left last year and refer to the book only.

  PHILIP MacDONALD – The Mystery of the Dead Police. Doubleday/Crime Club, US, hardcover, 1933. Pocket #70, paperback, 1940. Dell D-247, Great Mystery Library #19, paperback, 1958. Macfadden Books 60-205, paperback, 1965. Vintage, paperback, 1984. First published in the UK as X v. Rex by Collins Crime Club, hardcover, 1933, as by Martin Porlock. Films: MGM, 1934, as The Mystery of Mr. X; MGM, 1952, as The Hour of Thirteen.

   I don’t know where this book falls chronologically in terms of serial killer fiction, but it must have been one the first. (Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders was published in 1936, for example, but serial killers themselves (e.g. Jack the Ripper) had been around for a long time when this book was written.)

   The victims in this one, though, are all policemen. We know that the killer is a madman, for every so often we are given glimpses into his diary after each death, often in very inventive ways. There is an attempt by the author to throw suspicion on a gentleman adventurer named Nicholas Revel. He is, apparently, well-to-do, but no one, including Scotland Yard, knows how he has gained his fortune.

   The madman’s diary, I suspect, is of little interest to readers today — too many serial killers have come down the pike in the meantime, I’m afraid — but the mysterious activities of Mr Revel? This is what makes this tale go down a lot more easily than a lot of other detective fiction does that was written in 1933.

   Revel clears the former fiancé of Jane Frensham of being the killer, for example, but then he also seems to be romancing her a little as well. But since Miss Frensham’s father is the chief commissioner of the police, he finds himself helping to investigate the crimes, whether he wishes to or not.

   MacDonald is equally inventive in the way he tells the story, often in very short snippets from a multitude of viewpoints. The flaws in the telling, as I saw them, is that (as pointed out above) the madman is just that, mad, and that Revel’s place in the story is, alas, telegraphed long before I would have liked it to have been.

   But until the ending, I enjoyed the book very much. There is much about it that I will remember for some time. It has been considered a classic in many quarters over the years, but in today’s world of mystery fiction, I’m afraid it would be considered an old-fashioned and dated relic of its time, all for the reasons previously suggested or pointed out, nothing more, but nothing less, either.

THE HOUR OF 13. MGM, 1952. Peter Lawford (Nicholas Revel), Dawn Addams (Jane Frensham), Roland Culver, Derek Bond, Leslie Dwyer, Michael Hordern. Based on the novel The Mystery of the Dead Police, by Philip MacDonald. Director: Harold French.

   I have been told, but I do not know how true it may be, that this later film follows the earlier quite closely. If so, then even without seeing it, I can tell you that I’d be disappointed with the earlier one, too.

   Some of it has to do with Production Code. In the book [SPOILER WARNING] Revel gets away with his plan. In the movie, he is not so lucky. The final scene was the final straw, as far as I was concerned.

   Other changes: It is clear from the beginning of the movie what Revel’s plan is. It was revealed sooner in the book what he is up to than I would have liked, but for quite a while it causes quite a mystery if not a challenge to reader to figure it out on his or her own.

   The semi-romance between Revel and the police commissioner’s daughter (Dawn Addams) is nipped in the bud far from the end of the movie. Revel and the fiancé shake hands, and neither the latter nor the girl are mentioned again. In the movie, the killer is given a motive; in the book as I recall he was imply a madman. The time frame has been changed also, from the 1930s to Victorian England.

   But the biggest change, I think, was bigger than any of the above. In the book, a great amount of emphasis was placed on the serial killer, and the inability of Scotland Yard to capture him was such a sensational story that it threatened to bring the government down. In the movie, very little attention was placed on this. The byplay between Revel and the gentlemen at Scotland Yard is the complete story, somewhat amusing but much more trivial than what the larger impact the book intended to provide.

   Your opinions may vary on this. In terms of your enjoyment of the movie, it might be helpful if you have not read the book. It also might help if your opinion of Peter Lawford’s acting ability is greater than mine. He has a great speaking voice, but I have never found any depth in any of the characters I have ever seen him portray.

SIROCCO. Columbia Pictures, 1951. Humphrey Bogart, Marta Toren, Lee J. Cobb, Everett Sloane, Gerald Mohr, Zero Mostel. Screenplay: A.I. Bezzerides & Hans Jacoby, based on the novel Le coup de grâce by Joseph Kessel. Director: Curtis Bernhardt.

   Sirocco was hardly Humphrey Bogart’s finest hour. Directed by Curtis Bernhardt, this espionage thriller features Bogie in a role eerily similar to that of Rick Blaine in Casablanca. But Casablanca this is not. Rather, Sirocco is a rather tepid, occasionally soporific affair, about a Harry Smith (Bogart), a cynical high living arms dealer, based in Damascus in 1925 at a time when Syrian Arab nationalists were battling the French military stationed there.

   There is, of course, a girl and a romantic rivalry that has political overtones. In this case, the girl is Violette, a Frenchwoman portrayed by Swedish actress Märta Torén. A fine actress, to be sure; alas, she simply doesn’t have the screen presence of Ingrid Bergman. But then again who does?

   Lee J. Cobb, a fine character actor in some roles, portrays a French Army officer in love with Violette. Did I mention he’s also tasked with rooting out who is selling arms to Arab leader Emir Hassan? Hint: it’s Bogie’s character. That’s basically the whole plot.

   Then again, Sirocco isn’t a total wash. The cinematography is occasionally quite stellar, and Zero Mostel’s scenery chewing performance as a local merchant is quite memorable and downright enjoyable to behold. It’s just that one cannot help but compare this mediocre film with that of Bogart’s best films. Even if they named it Damascus – a far more fitting and preferable title – Sirocco would pale in comparison not only to Casablanca but also to one of my personal favorites, To Have and To Have Not. So, take it from me. It’s okay to forget Sirocco. After all, we’ll always have Paris.

This is the only jazz song I know about the game of Scrabble. From Lorraine Feather’s 2010 album Ages:

MAX COLLINS – Hard Cash. Nolan #5. Pinnacle, paperback original, 1982. Reprinted as by Max Allan Collins, Perfect Crime Books, softcover, 2012.

   Professional criminal Nolan is going straight now as co-owner and manager of a seafood restaurant “on the banks of the Iowa River,” but his criminal past confronts him in the person of George Rigby, president of a local bank that Nolan had held up a couple of years earlier.

   Rigby is being eased out of his executive position and, knowing that his unfortunate habit of using bank funds for his own purpose will be disclosed in the next audit, wants Nolan to bring off a hit that will enable Rigby to restore the missing funds and support him and his ambitious mistress in his new life. His lever with the unwilling Nolan is a series of compromising photographs, so Nolan and Jon, Nolan’s young comic collector and artist side-kick, agree to co-operate and begin to set up the operation for Christmas Eve.

   Collins’ second plot line also concerns an incident in Nolan’s past, with murderous Sam Comfort and his surviving son, Terry, out to avenge their treatment by Nolan and his friends in an earlier drama of betrayal and revenge.

   The two plots — the bank job and the Comforts’ vengeance — coincide at the bloody climax of a sordid, improbable, and entertaining web of deceit and coincidence.

   Collins returns here to the competent form of the first two Nolan novels, and my only complaint concerns the padded exposition (for the convenience of readers unfamiliar with the earlier novels) and the coincidental deliverance of Nolan and Breen in the climax and denouement.

   Everyone’s plans go awry in this novel, and Nolan is as much a victim as the other characters, although he is luckier than any of his antagonists. The fates do conspire to do in the “truly” wicked, but they also do in one of Nolan’s confederates and spare Nolan himself a couple of turns of the wheel that seem intended only to leave the way open for the next book in the series. Sidekick Jon is still an appealing character, made all the more so by his reluctance to continue his life of crime.

   Nolan has been compared to Richard Stark’s Parker, but the Collins’ series lacks the bitter edge and power of the Stark novels, although this is a good suspense melodrama in a minor key.

   I can’t claim to have read all 70-odd Maigret novels, but I’ve been reading them off-and-on since my teens and I still find many of them fascinating, especially the ones from the Thirties. Unfortunately my French isn’t good enough to allow me to read them as Simenon wrote them, but over the years I’ve sometimes wound up with two different translations of the same book, and a number of them are now being translated yet a third time. Reading two translations side by side is a heady experience, especially if you put on your detective cap and try to figure out what is and what isn’t in the original.

   There were characters a bit like Maigret and characters actually going by that name in a few of the more than 200 pulp novels Simenon wrote under a dozen or so pseudonyms in the 1920s, but the first genuine Maigret was PIETR-LE-LETTON, which was written in 1929 and published by A. Fayard et cie two years later as either the third or the fifth in the monthly Maigret series. In the States, as THE STRANGE CASE OF PETER THE LETT (1933), it was the fourth of six early Maigrets published by the Covici Friede firm.

   I am lucky enough to have a copy of that edition. No translator is credited but various sources in print and online claim that Simenon’s French was first rendered into English by Anthony Abbot. As all lovers of detection know, Abbot was the name under which best-selling novelist Fulton Oursler (1893-1952), following the lead of S. S. Van Dine, both signed and narrated the cases of New York City police commissioner Thatcher Colt, published originally by Covici Friede.

   Many decades ago I read all the Abbot novels and wrote an essay about them which in its final form can be found in my CORNUCOPIA OF CRIME (2010). I had heard the rumor that Oursler had translated the early Maigrets but, since he had died when I was a child, I couldn’t ask him. I did however write his son Will Oursler (1913-1985), who was also a part-time mystery writer both under his own name and as Gale Gallagher and Nick Marino.

   In a letter dated January 4, 1970 — My God! More than 46 years ago! — he replied as follows: “[M]y father did not make the actual translation as he simply was not that fluent in French. It is more probable that most of his effort was in the area of editing and polishing after the translation was done. It is certain that he would not have been capable of translating six Maigret novels.”

   The second translation of PIETR-LE-LETTON, retitled MAIGRET AND THE ENIGMATIC LETT, was by Daphne Woodward, published in 1963 as a Penguin paperback and sold in the U.S. for 65 cents. According to Steve Trussel’s priceless Maigret website, the Woodward version “is much closer to Simenon’s French text, the first being wayward at times.”

   Even without the French text at hand, I’ve found indications that Trussel is right. The novel features an American millionaire staying in the posh Hotel Majestic who is strangely connected with Pietr. The 1933 translation gives his name as Mortimer Livingston, which seems perfectly proper for the character. Daphne Woodward renders the name as Mortimer-Levingston, which is silly but consistent with the young Simenon’s ignorance of all things American.

   This character has a secretary, staying in London but never seen or spoken to. His name in the 1933 translation is Stone, which sounds fine. In Woodward’s rendition he’s called Stones, which is dreadful but again consistent with Simenon’s ignorance. It seems clear that the anonymous original translator went out of his or her way to Americanize various details in the novel that Simenon flubbed. Or was that part of the polishing job by Fulton Oursler?

   Written before Maigret and his world had crystallized in Simenon’s creative mind, PIETR-LE-LETTON is significantly different from almost all the later novels in the series. For one thing, it’s much more violent, with a total of four murders (the work of three different murderers) plus a suicide, committed in Maigret’s presence and with his gun.

   There’s also a great deal more physical action, with Maigret racing from Paris to the Normandy fishing port of F camp and out over the rocks along the muddy seacoast after his chief adversary despite being half-frozen and having been shot in the chest! But there’s a genuine battle of nerves between Maigret and his quarry, more intense and existential than their counterparts in many later books in the series, and the evocation of atmosphere which was Simenon’s trademark is as powerful as in the finest films noir. In either translation this debut novel is a gem.

   In 2014 Penguin Classics released yet another translation, this one by David Bellos and bearing the title PETER THE LATVIAN. Did some political correctness guru decide that Lett was a demeaning term like Polack? And what did Bellos make of passages like the beginning of Chapter 13? In Woodward’s version: “Every race has its own smell, loathed by other races…. In Anna Gorskin’s room you could cut it with a knife…. Flaccid sausages of a repulsive shade of pink, thickly speckled with garlic. A plate with some fried fish floating in a sour liquid.”

   There’s nothing like that first sentence in the 1933 rendition, perhaps because Fulton Oursler cut it out, but we do get to see and smell the “horrible pink sausages, flabby to the touch and filled with garlic” and “a platter containing the remains of a fried fish swimming in a sour-smelling sauce….” Need I mention that this scene takes place in the rue du Roi-de-Sicile, in Paris’s Jewish ghetto?

   While fine-tuning this month’s column I discovered that there really was, or at least might have been, a Latvian criminal named Pietr. He was known as Peter the Painter and his real name may have been Pietr Piatkow, or perhaps Gederts Eliass or Janis Zhaklis. He seems to have emigrated from East Europe to London where he joined an ethnic gang that stole in order to fund their radical political activities.

   He is believed to have taken part in the infamous Siege of Sidney Street which inspired the climax of Hitchcock’s THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934), although a brief sketch in England’s Dictionary of National Biography warns us that “None of the … biographical ‘facts’ about him … is altogether reliable.”

   Whether Simenon had ever heard of this man remains unknown, but in any event the fictional Pietr the Lett is not a leftist radical, does not commit crimes of violence and turns out not even to be Latvian. Which raises another mystery: Why did Simenon call the guy Pietr the Lett? Pietr the Estonian — or the Esty? — would have sounded ridiculous even in French, but there’s absolutely no reason in the novel why he couldn’t have been a genuine Latvian. Ah well, c’est la vie.

   Train murders were something of a Simenon specialty. Of course, when such a crime takes place in a Maigret, it’s bound to lose intensity and vividness simply because we can’t be there to witness it. This is certainly true of the first murder in PIETR-LE-LETTON, and it’s also true of a Maigret short story dating from about seven years later.

   We learn from Steve Trussel’s website that “Jeumont, 51 minutes d’arrêt!” was written in October 1936 and, along with more than a dozen other shorts from the same period, was first collected in France as LES NOUVELLES ENQU TES DE MAIGRET (1944). It was never included in any collection of Maigret shorts published in English but did appear in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, November 1966, as “Inspector Maigret Deduces,” with no translator credit and with an unaccountable 1961 copyright date.

   (The FictionMags Index explains the date — the story’s first appearance in English was in the UK edition of Argosy for October 1961—and identifies the translator as one J.E. Malcolm.)

   As in PIETR-LE-LETTON, Maigret tackles a murder on a train, this one bound from Warsaw to Berlin to Liège in Belgium (Simenon’s birthplace) to Erquelinnes (on the Belgian side of the border with France) to Jeumont (just across the line on the French side) and on to Paris, except that one of the six passengers in a particular compartment is found dead in his seat at Jeumont. The dead man is a wealthy German banker named Otto Bauer.

   Called in by his railroad-detective nephew, Maigret gets in touch with his Berlin counterparts and learns that Bauer was forced out of the banking business “after the National Socialist revolution, but gave an undertaking of loyalty to the Government, and has never been disturbed….” and also that he’s “[c]ontributed one million marks to party funds.”

   Clearly, despite his name, Bauer was a Jew, and was desperately trying to escape Nazi Germany with whatever money he could salvage. That element is what makes this tale unique among the Maigret stories of the late Thirties. At least in translation there’s not a word of sympathy for the victim, not a word of disgust for the regime he was fleeing. For Maigret, and for Simenon I fear, it’s just another factor in another case. The murder weapon, by the way, turns out to be a needle, which was also one of the murder weapons in PIETR-LE-LETTON although not the one used in the train killing.

   I wouldn’t venture to guess how many train murders can be found in Simenon’s stand-alone novels, but the most vivid and intense that I can recall takes place in Chapter 2 of LE LOCATAIRE (1934; translated by Stuart Gilbert as THE LODGER in the two-in-one volume ESCAPE IN VAIN, 1943). Elie Nagear, a desperate young Turkish Jew, bludgeons to death a wealthy Dutch entrepreneur with whom he’s sharing a couchette on the night train from Brussels to Paris after it crosses the French border. (In European trains of the Thirties a couchette was a small chamber used as sleeping quarters by two and sometimes four total strangers.) On the run from the police, he takes a train back to Belgium and holes up in a boarding house for foreign students in the city of Charleroi.

   In Chapter 9 there’s a brief conversation between Elie and a fellow roomer. “They were talking in the papers of the difference between French and Belgian law. Well, suppose someone who’s being proceeded against in Belgium by the French police commits a crime in Brussels, or some other Belgian town…. What I mean is, that a man who’s liable to the death penalty in France might happen to commit a crime in Belgium. In that case, it seems to follow that he should first be tried in Belgium, if it’s in that country he’s arrested. And it also follows, doesn’t it, that he should serve his sentence in that country?”

   What Simenon assumes his readers know is that France at this time still had the death penalty while Belgium had abolished it. On May 10, 1933, in Boullay-les-Trous, a village south of Paris, an obese pornographer named Hyacinthe Danse, who was known to Simenon, murdered both his mother and his mistress. Fearing that he’d be caught and guillotined, Danse took the train to Liège in Belgium, where on May 12 he murdered his childhood confessor (and also Simenon’s), a Jesuit priest named Hault, and then turned himself in.

   This case was apparently still pending in Belgium when Simenon wrote LE LOCATAIRE. Sure enough, in December 1934 Danse was convicted of Hault’s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, meaning that he couldn’t be extradited to France and stand trial for the other murders until he was dead. Less than two years later, Simenon turned the Danse story into a short Maigret, included as “Death Penalty” in the collection MAIGRET’S PIPE (1977) and discussed in my column for September 2015.

   Which is enough journey to France for one month. Or, as they say on the left bank of the Seine: basta.

FORT APACHE, THE BRONX. Time-Life/20th Century Fox, 1981. Paul Newman, Edward Asner, Ken Wahl, Danny Aiello, Rachel Ticotin, Pam Grier, Kathleen Beller. Screenplay: Heywood Gould, suggested by the experiences of Thomas Mulhearn and Pete Tessitore. Director: Daniel Petrie.

   I would venture that Fort Apache, The Bronx is one of those movies that elicits either strong positive or negative reactions, with few observers taking a neutral position on this gritty police procedural. Part of it, I suppose, concerns the subject matter; namely, the NYPD and its efforts (or lack thereof) to police the decaying, drug-infested, burnt-out South Bronx in late 1970s/early 1980s.

   The other aspect that likely provokes strong reactions is the fact that Fort Apache, The Bronx is less a plot-driven story than it is a character study of a middle aged cop trying to find meaning both personal and professional life. Indeed, the movie veers from crime film to romantic drama in the blink of an eye and then back again to crime film, often leaving the viewer less that surefooted as to where the movie is headed and what’s coming up next: more personal drama or a nasty, violent sequence showing the utter depravity of the criminal element in one of (at the time) New York’s roughest neighborhoods.

   Count me in the (all things considered) strongly positive camp, albeit with some caveats.

    Fort Apache, The Bronx was not directed by a well-known auteur and it certainly doesn’t have the same emotional punch as the grindhouse classic, Death Wish (1974), let alone Martin Scorsese’s brilliantly bleak Taxi Driver (1976), gritty New York films both.

   It does, however, have some exceptional standout performances by not only leading man Paul Newman, but also by supporting cast members Ken Wahl, Ed Asner, and Pam Grier.

   Newman, a fine actor more than capable of taking on demanding roles, portrays Murphy, a cynical, world-weary middle-aged cop stationed in the South Bronx. The precinct house, his real home, is nicknamed “Fort Apache” signifying that the station is less akin to a “normal” police station and more like a Western cavalry outpost in hostile Indian territory. Unfortunately, it’s a theme that doesn’t get played up as much as it might have.

   The plot basics: After a strung-out prostitute named Charlotte (Grier) murders two cops in broad daylight, Murphy and his young partner, Corelli (Wahl) are tasked by their new by-the-book boss (Asner) with rooting out the criminal element from the neighborhood and shaking them down for information on the cop killer. Little do the cops know that the killer isn’t a male suspect; rather that it’s the devilishly sociopathic hooker who has been responsible for an entire series of seemingly senseless grisly slayings. Complicating matters for the mismatched duo is endemic police corruption, the local heroin trade, and Murphy’s burgeoning romance with an emergency room nurse.

   Eventually, all the various subplots come together, some neatly and others not so comprehensively. All of this may give some viewers a sense of incompleteness, as if the various strands were never adequately resolved. But that, in my estimation, was the whole point of the film. Police work, especially in a beleaguered neighborhood in a dying part of town, is never really going to provide its participants with a total sense of closure.

   Overall, Fort Apache, The Bronx is a solid piece of filmmaking. Largely filmed on location, what the movie lacks in imagination, it more than makes up with stark images of decay and dilapidation. There’s one scene in particular, located toward the end of the movie that remains etched in my mind. Murphy (Newman) is walking alone on the sidewalk just below the elevated subway tracks. In the context of what has recently happened to his character, it’s a beautifully haunting scene begging the question as to what possible impact a solitary man can have in the midst of such sadness and disorder.

ROSS THOMAS – Voodoo, Ltd. Durant & Wu #3. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1992; paperback, 1993.

   Well, it’s out: Ross Thomas’s twenty-fourth book, and the third featuring the team of the lean, scarred Quincy Durant and Arthur Wu, pretender to the Chinese throne. What more needs to be said?

   The story takes place about five years after events of Out on the Rim. Durant and Wu are partners in WuDu, Ltd., a London firm that does for you which you might not want to do yourself. They are hired by Help! (a sort of headhunter firm for those with delicate, out-of-the-ordinary, and confidential needs) to find a pair of missing hypnotists. The hypnotists were also furnished by Help! to Ione Gamble, a famous actress-director accused of murdering her ex-lover and producer. Blackmail is feared, among other things.

   Recruited by Artie and Quincy to help are Otherguy Overby, an amiable but ruthless con man (“It was some other guy”), Georgia Blue, a thoroughly ruthless ex-Secret Service agent, and Booth Stallings, the international terrorist expert; all of whom appeared in the preceding Wu-Durant adventure. The interplay of characters among these five forms an integral part of the book.

   All of the things we’ve come to expect from Thomas are here to one degree or another. a convoluted fast-paced plot, thoroughly amoral characters (though usually charmingly so), and all imbued with Thomas’s wryly cynical way of looking at the world and its creatures.

   On the other hand … If you haven’t met the players before, you won’t find the usual carefully built and illuminating characterizations that are one pf Thomas’s strengths, and none of the supporting characters are strong enough to compensate. Too, the plot seems rather standard — for Thomas, anyway.

   Overall, it’s the weakest book he’s done in a long while. But it’s still damned good, and well worth your time.

Editorial Comment:   Barry’s author profile of Ross Thomas, which anticipated this as his next book, can be found on this blog here.

HOUSE OF 1,000 DOLLS American International Pictures, 1968. Originally released in Spain as La casa de las mil muñecas, 1967. Vincent Price, Martha Hyer and George Nader. Written and produced by Harry Alan Towers. Directed by Jeremy Summers.

   You know a movie’s in trouble when the hero of the piece gets third billing. You know it’s really desperate trouble when that billing reads “George Nader,” an interesting man perhaps, but never the most electrifying of actors.

   Actually, House of 1,000 Dolls has a few stylistic flourishes that make it just about worthwhile. It’ll never make anyone’s “10 Best” list, but it’s an okay time-killer if you’re in the mood.

   Vincent Price and Martha Hyer play traveling magicians in the employ of a shadowy figure known only as “The King of Hearts” using their act to lure beautiful women into sexual slavery in a Tangiers Brothel. This not only gives Price a chance to strut about in cape and top hat, looking regally sinister, but also gives writer/producer Towers ample opportunity to show lotsa young ladies running around in their undies, a win-win situation if ever there was one.

   I have to confess that I’ve only come across one real-life “white slavery” operation and it was a pretty tatty affair involving a few rather unattractive and not-very-bright young ladies (not all of them white, for that matter) held in the thrall (and ratty apartment) of a rather unpleasant and not-very-bright old guy. So maybe I don’t have a sound basis for comparison, but it seems to me that House not only sanitizes the concept but positively glamorizes it.

   In this film the women are all beautiful, the brothel lavish and well-staffed, and the operations positively baroque; one slave is actually delivered to the villains in an ornate coffin transported by a hearse, which strikes me as a lot of overhead for an enterprise like this.

   In keeping with the spirit, Price and Hyer do their act in the finest nightclubs, travel in style and employ a seemingly limitless army of black-clad nasty guys who travel in pairs and prove completely unequal to the task of eliminating George Nader.

   Ah yes: George Nader. It seems he’s a forensic examiner for the NYPD and this makes him an expert in all sorts of crime-fighting, following clues, trailing suspects, wise-cracking at the expense of local cops and bashing about a bit when the occasion calls for it. Yes, of course it does.

   Well you don’t go to a movie like this for stark realism, and I’m happy to say that House of 1,000 Dolls doesn’t bother with any. There’s a fairly rudimentary plot about George’s wife getting enlisted in the brothel’s Ladies Auxiliary, some mystery about who The King of Hearts will turn out to be, a few fights, chases, murders and a slave-girl revolt (are there echoes of Spartacus here?) all handled passably, sometimes stylishly… but somehow never memorably. This is a film you will soon forget, but it’s painless and sporadically fun to watch.

From this Manchester (UK) based singer-songwriter’s 2014 album Haul Away: