It’s a shame, I know, but as we say in Italy, not every ring doughnut comes out with a hole in the middle. And the tenth entry in Universal Studios’ Holmes and Watson series, is by common consent considered the very least of them. It involves the protection of a member of a foreign royal family, stolen emeralds and is largely set aboard a ship and has a trio of memorable villains too. So far, so good. But we begin in a foggy old London fish and chip shop for an elaborate meet and greet that gets pretty silly …
The following review is offered for Todd Mason’s Tuesday’s Overlooked Film meme over at his fab Sweet Freedom blog.
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This Summer the Waterstones bookchain is running a “Summer of Spies” promotion at its Gower Street shop in London, as a run-up to the publication of the new Smiley novel by John le Carre, A Legacy of Spies, due to be published in September.
There are oddly obscure mysteries from the Golden Age that are in fact still entertaining and clever and deserve to be rediscovered. Then there are novels that once were considered classics but now seem very tame indeed. And then there are those that were game changers, genuinely thrilling works that brought something brand new and which ensured that nothing could ever truly be the same ever again. John Dickson’s Carr’s The Burning Court, first published in 1937, is truly one of those. And, without spoilers, here’s why:
Ed McBain decided that ultra-bigot Detective/First Grade Oliver Wendell Weeks – known colloquially (if not to his face) as ‘Fat Ollie’ – somehow merited having his own 87th Precinct mystery, even though he’s from the 88th! But what about Roger Havilland and Andy Parker, the two equally un-PC cops actually from the 87th? They never got a volume dedicated to them. But life is never fair .. Carella actually does most of the work tracking down the murderer of a candidate for mayor; Ollie instead tries to find the miscreant who lifted the manuscript of his debut novel!
It’s time for a guest post from my blogging buddy Livius, who writes about movies at his marvellous blog, 
At least in popular culture, one might think that zombies really have inherited the earth. At least this hybrid cop show has a sense of humour and doesn’t get too bogged down in the morbidity of it all. Indeed this is a surprisingly amusing show, though I’m not that surprised that it didn’t last too long on the airwaves. One imagines in fact that it might do considerably better today than way back in 2011 – but then, a lot has happened to the world in the last six years …
Steve Carella is paired with Fat Ollie Weeks in this unusual entry in the 87th Precinct series. Shifting away from the whodunit formula, this is a contemporary thriller involving drug trafficking, counterfeiting and the secret service and featuring a rogue’s gallery of villains ranging from petty burglars to hit-men (and hit-women) and Islamic terrorists on American soil.
The subtitle really does say it all: The Boom in British Thrillers from Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed
Created by Robin Chapman, this glorious 1960s TV show was big in its day and deserves to be rediscovered. The eponymous room is the secret centre of operations for the Department of Special Research. And the man is Edwin Oldenshaw (Richard Vernon) who, assisted by Ian Dimmock (Michael Aldridge) in season 1 and later Imlac Defraits (Denholm Elliot), is set to solve the cases that nobody else can even understand. And do it without ever leaving their special room …
I first read this urban fantasy / police procedural hybrid several years ago and really enjoyed it, but for various reasons stopped there with the series. Recently a couple of friends of mine mentioned they had been reading the later books in the cycle (the seventh volume in the series is due out in September) and when a good friend of mine recently gave me a copy of the first, I decided the gods of literature were trying to tell me something! So I decided to re-read it, with a view to actually getting into the whole cycle of adventures featuring probationary policeman, Peter Grant.
When is a submarine thriller not just a submarine thriller? Well, in this case, when it’s also an allegory of right-wing American imperialism – which is definitely what I liked most about Last Resort. In this short-lived TV show (only 13 episodes were made), Andre Braugher stars as the captain of the USS Colorado who is forced off the grid when he becomes a pawn in an attempt by forces within the Washington military-industrial complex to take over the government.
This film marked the final (re) appearance of Professor Moriarty (or, rather, as credited, ‘Moriarity’) in the Universal Holmes and Watson series, this time in the chilly, smooth-tongued form of Henry Daniell (who was said to be Rathbone’s favourite). And this time he is behind a particularly gruesome series of murders,
The murder of a nun, a burglar who leaves cookies as a calling card and various family entanglements involving Steve Carella, his sister and the man who murdered their father, are just some of the elements to be found in the last 87th Precinct novel from the 20th century. And a very good one it is too!
This was the third book in the Inspector Morse series, and is perhaps my favourite of them all (well, it is either this one or Service of All the Dead, I always struggle a bit between the two). Not only is the story very clever but it is also notable because in creating it, Colin Dexter seems to have drawn quite heavily on his own life. And it also made for a superb piece of TV drama when it was adapted by Julian Mitchell for the Inspector Morse series.
This unpretentious thriller, running just under 90 minutes and released in the US as The Destructors, was shot on location in France and features Michael Caine as a professional assassin, Anthony Quinn as a US intelligence agent and James Mason as a Mr Big in the Marseilles underworld. The score is by the great Roy Budd, the lovely cinematography by 
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are off to a remote part of Scotland to investigate the peculiar goings on at Drearcliff House, a gloomy old mansion where its inhabitants are all starting to receive mysterious threats before dying. Has their group insurance policy got something to do with it?
Robert Bloch (1917-1994) is one of my favourite writers. I discovered him at a very early age and I doubt I’ll ever be able to let him go – but how can you not love an author who once quipped, more or less:
This is was the second of two feature-length TV Movies that ultimately served to launch the short-lived private eye series Harry O (1974-76) starring David Janssen, which in its first season may have got as good as this genre ever got on the small screen.
