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From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times Pacific.

Tuesday 11/27/07

8:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
The Case of the Howling Dog (1934 USA): TCM offers a heaping helping of Perry Mason who-dun-its today, starting with the first of six Warner Bros. second features based upon the adventures of Erle Stanley Gardner's then newly created character. The Case of the Howling Dog stars the always terrific Warren William as Mason, an attorney with a penchant for private dicking during his off hours. The titular mutt finds itself involved in a convoluted murder case, and it's naturally up to Perry to unravel the mystery of missing nervous nellie Arthur Cartwright (Gordon Westcott). Co-starring Mary Astor, Allen Jenkins, and a host of other familiar faces from the Warners' stock company, The Case of the Howling Dog provided Perry with an excellent big screen introduction. It's followed at 10:15 AM by The Case of the Curious Bride (1935), a rather mundane murder mystery featuring Errol Flynn as a corpse on a slab; at 11:45 AM by The Case of the Lucky Legs (1935), wherein Perry must bring the killer of a carny con man to justice; at 1:15 PM by The Case of the Velvet Claws (1936), in which secretary and confidante Della Street (Claire Dodd) becomes Mrs. Mason; at 2:30 PM by The Case of the Black Cat (1936), in which Ricardo Cortez replaced William in the lead role; and at 3:30 PM by The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1936), a last gasp entry featuring the less than satisfactory Donald Woods as Mason, here engaged by an Australian clergyman to defend a woman wrongly convicted of manslaughter. These films are distinctly of their era, resolutely in the murder mystery genre, and characters aside bear next to no resemblance to the later television series starring Raymond Burr.

6:00 PM More Max
Let's Go to Prison (2006 USA): As far as lowbrow comedies go, this is a very good one, and all the more surprising considered it was hatched by the same creative team that gave us the family-friendly Night at the Museum. Dax Shepard (Idiocracy) stars as John Lyshitski, a two-bit hustler who keeps getting sent to jail by the same judge, Nelson Biederman III. Released at the completion of his most recent sentence, Lyshitski is determined to get his revenge on Judge Biederman, but when he learns his nemesis has shuffled off this mortal coil shifts targets to the Judge's son, Nelson IV (Will Arnett), a tyrannical spoiled brat who now runs the foundation named in his father's honor. Lyshitski sets up Nelson fils and gets him sent to jail, where he plans to stage manage the mental and physical destruction of his arch-nemesis' offspring - but things go awry when young Biederman makes a name for himself and finds himself the source of widespread admiration on the prison yard. Not everything about Let's Go to Prison works - not least the unsatisfactory ‘ending' - but there are enough laughs here to entertain, and even a little social commentary regarding the inequities of the American judicial system. It's not nearly as bad as the peremptory reviews implied upon its extremely brief cinema release last November.

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