Howard Greene Movies

A murder has been committed at the palatial Parisian residence of Benjamin Ballon (George Sanders). All the evidence points to sexy, wide-eyed housemaid Maria Gambrelli (Elke Sommer). Police inspector Dreyfuss (Herbert Lom) is prepared to make an arrest -- and then the gloriously, monumentally inept Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) arrives on the scene. Clouseau may have difficulty getting through the day without falling into ponds, knocking people cold with opened doors, and pocketing flaming cigarette lighters, but his instincts are right on target when he decides that Mme. Gambrelli is being framed by someone else in the Ballon household. Even as the murder victims pile up, Clouseau is determined to prove Mme. Gambrelli's innocence. As he cuts a bumbling, destructive swath through Paris, Clouseau drives Dreyfuss literally insane. This fact leads to the literally explosive climax, and to the ultimate vindication of Mme. Gambrelli. While we first met Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther, Shot in the Dark is the film that truly established the Clouseau mythos: the festive clumsiness, the convoluted dialogue ("You shot him in a rit of fealous jage!"), the Fractured French ("A beump on zee head!"), the twitching lunacy of poor Inspector Dreyfuss, the unexpected "judo lessons" of Clouseau's houseboy Kato (Burt Kwouk), and of course the hilariously macabre jokes involving dead or seriously injured bystanders. You'd never know it, but A Shot in the Dark was inspired by a standard three-act stage comedy by Harry Kurnitz, which in turn was adapted from the French play L'Idiote by Marcel Achard. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Novelist Mickey Spillane portrays his own creation, Mike Hammer, in The Girl Hunters. Hammer has spent seven years in an alcoholic funk after the supposed death of his secretary, Velda. He is brought back to the land of the living by his old friendly enemy, police lieutenant Pat Chambers (Scott Peters), who wants Hammer to extract some information out of a dying federal agent. This puts Mike on the trail of a subversive communist organization, the key to which seems to be sexy Laura Knapp (Shirley Eaton), the widow of a murdered senator. When Hammer determines that following this espionage trail may lead to relocating Velda, who might not be dead after all, he pursues matters with his usual fascistic tendency to pummel first and ask questions later. The Girl Hunters is the film in which Mike Hammer incapacitates an opponent by literally nailing the latter's hands to the floor. But that's kid stuff compared to the fate in store for the treacherous Laura Knapp. The Girl Hunters was filmed in its entirety in England. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The power of hypnotism provides the basis of this film that was released in "Hypnovision" (yet another promotional gimmick) A budding and frustrated mystery writer takes extreme steps to insure that his latest thriller contains accurate descriptions of horrible murders in this gory horror thriller. He decides that the best way to do this is to set up and witness similar murders first- hand, so, not wanting to bloody his own hands, he hypnotizes his assistant, turns him into a deformed monster and has him do the dirty work using a few devilishly clever gadgets that include binoculars equipped with spring-loaded spikes, a secret guillotine poised above a young woman's bed, and deadly ice tongs. Afterward, the writer drops the bodies in a vat of acid. Several people die before the assistant rebels and gets bloody revenge. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide