MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY (1993)

I love this film.

Larry and Carol Lipton (Allen and Keaton) meet the older couple, Paul and Lilian House, who live in the next door apartment. It's an exciting evening spent discussing such subjects as stamp collecting, health issues and twin cemetery plots. The next night Larry and Carol walk out into the hallway to find the paramedics toting Lilian out on a stretcher covered by a sheet. Dead of an heart attack.

Carol is saddened by Lilian's passing even though she didn't really know her...but there's something just not right. Carol is suspicious by Paul's lack of mourning. A few day's after Lilian's death, Carol and Larry run into Paul on the street and he seems almost cheerful. This rubs Carol the wrong way and despite Larry's "forbidding" her to investigate she does it anyway and eventually gets him in on the case too.

If, like me, you're a huge fan of both Woody Allen and the witty and playful banter between Nick and Nora Charles in THE THIN MAN films then you'll be in movie heaven with MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY. There's nothing fancy going on, it's just a fun, breezy film that is a delight from beginning to end. Highly recommended.

One thing that I like to do whenever I watch MMM is to imagine that Alvy Singer and Annie from ANNIE HALL got back together, married and this is them 16 years later!  It's like ANNIE HALL 2 that way!

Camera crew visible in broken mirror.

Google Maps Street View

Google Maps Street View

BUG (1975)

A earthquake in a small desert town releases a bunch of nasty-looking bugs that have been trapped way down in the Earth for god only knows how long. The bugs don't take over the town KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS-style or grow really big EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS-style. No, they're pretty happy just standing around doing pretty much nothing. You can pick 'em up and touch them. If you pester them too much they might spit out some fire at you, but that's about it. To make matters even more non-threatening, around the 56 minute mark all of the bugs, except one, die off due to atmospheric pressure.  How...exciting.

As Fate would have it, the last bug is captured by a professor (Bradford Dillman) who keeps the bug alive in a pressurized chamber.  He even goes so far as to breed the bug with a roach. The bug has some freaky babies and those babies have even freakier babies. Oh yeah, the professor isn't doing this in a lab, but in a goddamn shack out in the middle of the desert. Being an idiot, the professor handles the bugs barehanded and never secures their cage properly, so they're constantly getting out and even pass the time by writing him messages on the wall. Unfortunately, none of the messages say anything like "Hey, do something entertaining!" because the last 40 minutes of this movie are pure torture. Nothing happens. The guy talks into a microphone, the bugs crawl around...repeat that same scenario over and over until the stupid ending that made absolutely zero sense.

How was this movie even made? Did nobody during the making of this film once say "You know what? There's nothing going on in this movie! Why would anybody want to see it? Maybe we should have something happen!"? Obviously not. It blows my mind that not only could somebody write a script this terrible and not die of shame, but then be able to find people willing to put money into it!!! How does this even happen?!

I'm tired of talking about it. Let's just get on with our lives and forget this ever happened.

THE GREAT TEXAS DYNAMITE CHASE (1976)

[Update 01/12/2024: For 12 years(!!!) I've had a short and simple review up for this movie. But I have recently been threatened with legal action due to my (mostly positive) thoughts about the film. So, that said, I am removing the innocent opinions that came out of my handsome brain and replacing them with a blank (and I hope legal) empty space. Enjoy!]

Texas flag upside down.