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Well, this is not ever going to be confused with Casablanca or Citizen Kane. On its own, it's a truly terrible movie. Even within the dicey body of Charles B Pierce's work, it's no "Town that Dreaded Sundown." In fact, there was so much bad stuff here, that it's hard to identify a signature disastrous portion. If push comes to shove, it's got to be when Tanya and Laurie get the jeep stuck in the mud and they proceed to snipe at each other and then give an exciting reading a of the instruction manual for the Jeep. But, when you pair this genuinely awful movie with the MST3K 3000 crew, you end up with a truly genius episode of that show. Mike and the bots have so much to woke with here, but the two things that stand out are the little vignettes of different folks running into the creature - particularly the outhouse/Sears catalogue episode - and of course, the entire last act with the suave and handsome Oscar Culpepper act. Anyone else reminded of a young Sean Connery circa Dr. No. I definitely cannot do justice to that remarkable conclusion with its tense action and strong environmental message. Basically, you couldn't pay me to watch this movie in its natural state,, but add in Mike and the bots and it's a near-perfect episode of MST3K!

One of my Top 3 Vice episodes ("out where the buses don't run" and "give a little take a little" are the others. Just a crackling, potboiler of a series appropriately set in a heat wave that is, to my recollection, the only time that the weather of sultry Miami is it's own character. And the hot, humid weather ushers in two forces of nature - grafting wife and husband Callie and Charlie Bassett. Callie is my favorite Vice femme fatale. Her intro Perrier bath is as hot as the city itself. Charlie (played by Ted Nugent) is a gleeful psychopath to whom no crime even registers as remarkable. Strong character work gets us closer to Sonny as he tries to bring some light into the overwhelming darkness of this episode and helps us share Rico's frustration as he is worried that Sonny is losing his ability to judge things correctly. Crackerjack episode. 10/10.

This is my personal favorite episode. It also conta8ns really everything that people look back fondly on when thinking of Vice. The music in this episode is front and center. "baba o Reilly" and "Brothers in Arms" are perfect bookends for the episode as it descends from mania into atmospheric and haunting. The action sequences are superb and the acting is top notch. But, to me, the ending shot of Tony Arcaro and the unsettling feeling of darkness broken only by neon and Mark Knopfler's signature guitar work is chilling. I get goose bumps thinking of it right now. 10/10.

It's a fine performance by Dan O'Herlihy as Ohman and goos ensemble work all around. It's heavy handed in its messaging, for sure, but I quite like the visuals. A nifty film made for a pittance, clearly. I think it's admirable to deliver a noir-ish experience with no budget. Best watched with Mike and the bots via MST3K!

Rhymes with "Johnny Doesn't Care!" - Coincidence? Don't think so!

Solid episode. The short is hysterical, along with a decent main feature. Kinda long-winded - which isn't the best quality in a film to riff, IMO. But definitely another solid Joel episode from the height of his cleverness.

Powers Boothe was marvelous throughout the two iterations 9f this series (1983 and 1986). While the 83 episodes stand out, a couple from 86 measure up. One of those is Red Wind.

There are two factors that make this a standout hour. 1. Powers Boothe is perfect with the internal monologue. The natural forces of the agitating heat brought on by the Santa Ana wind is one of the ma8n characters in this episode. Boothe fleshes out exactly the level of skin-crawling agitation that this windswept heatwave is drumming up in the demimonde of 1940s Los Angeles. 2. Maury Chaykinks performance as the loathesome, bent copper, Lt. Copernik really is something to behold. The bigotry, laziness, stupidity are all unfurled perfectly and give us, for once, a secondary rooting interest in Copernik's I'll-treated partner, Lt. Ybarra. Just an excellent hour of noir!

Pickup on Noon Street is a heavy and brilliant episode from Season 2 of HBO's too-short run of Powers Boothe as Chandler's iconic shamus. As usual, sets, wardrobe, music is perfect and Robin Givens gives an entrancing performance as Token Ware, a damsel who is sure to encounter distress. It was a glimpse of some serious leading lady potential at a time when she was known for the ensemble comedy Head of the Class. Not the breeziest entry in this series - this dark tale about murdered sex workers of color and how little their lives meant to just about everyone in the Los Angeles of the late 40s doesn't lend itself to the humor that breezes through the less somber episodes of this show. But, this cast proves itself versatile enough to tackle the darkest hour in this series where life is grossly cheap, even hard boiled detective fiction standards.

Boothe was a perfect Marlowe. He's #3 in my book (Bogart still owns this role more than even his Sam Spade and James Garner is superb in Marlowe), and that is no snub given Elliot Gould, Bob Mitchum, James Caan and others have given Marlowe their best.

Aside from this series being too short, my only other regret was that HBO did not bring back Boothe for 1998's Poodle Springs about an aging Marlowe giving domestication a shot. A companion novel of sorts to the Long Goodbye, Chandler died with it unfinished but Robert Parker capably completed it and James Caan gave a good show of a world weary, yet hopeful Marlowe. Still, I'd have just been over the moon to see Powers Boothe come back after 12 years - which would have faithfully represented the passing of time between this series' timeline and Poodle Springs, set in 1963, about 15 years after the events of this series.

Dolemite and Human Tornado are two movies that I truly love. Both were comedies and, even though they had minuscule budgets and were often poorly acted, you could tell that they were true labors of love.

I can't say the same for Dolemite Explosion. Moore and John Jerry were just too old for these roles as quasi action stars after 27 years away from the game. They just looked perpetually out of place and not up to the task. RRM's earlier Dolemite films were often a bit baffling, but I enjoyed going on for the ride. Here, the stale writing very little of Dolemite's signature rhyming) and just zero development of story and characters just left me sad and going off to watch the original to cleanse my palette.