MIAMI UNDERCOVER

MIAMI UNDERCOVER (1961/syndicated). One season and 38 hour-hour episodes. 

In this lost crime series from the sixties, Lee Bowman (of The Lie) plays Jeff Thompson, a special investigator for the Hotel Association in Miami, where the show was filmed. Rocky Graziano (of Country Music Holiday) plays Rocky, who owns a nightclub -- Rocky's, of course -- and who apparently lives with Jeff. Another regular is Lt. O'Malley (Hugh Lawrence) of the Miami Beach Police Department, who has a pretty good relationship with Thompson. Michael Shayne, which debuted the previous year, also featured a private dick in Miami and lasted a little longer. 

There are only five episodes of the show available on the Internet, and it's too bad because Miami Undercover is an entertaining series. In "Miss Venus" the female partner in "Fair Lady" Enterprises is strangled, and the victim's sister works with Jeff to bring the killer to justice. In "School for Girls" Jeff and Rocky try to find out if it's a student or a teacher who's committing robberies at a girls' school. In "The Thrush" Larry King briefly plays a DJ who is murdered because he refuses to accept a bribe to play a record that is actually pretty decent. The singer is played by Jill Corey of Senior Prom and she gives a terrific dramatic performance. In "Bet Your Death" Suzanne Lloyd is excellent as a temptress who offers Jeff $10,000 for two days work selling bonds, but he knows something is fishy and uncovers a plot to assassinate a diplomat. In "Sunken Treasure" Nora Hayden of The Angry Red Planet is a duplicitous female who embroils an innocent young couple in a murderous scheme involving a phony treasure hunt in the Florida Keys. All of these entertaining episodes, with the exception of "Miss Venus," are also available in a DVD collection. 

Verdict: Interesting old series worth resuscitating. **3/4. 

THE LITTLE SISTER Raymond Chandler

THE LITTLE SISTER. Raymond Chandler. 1949.  

Private eye Philip Marlowe is hired by a young lady whose brother has gone missing. As he looks for this fellow, who seems a bit on the shady side, Marlowe keeps tripping over dead bodies. The trail leads to a glamorous movie star, Mavis Weld, who is afraid of scandal, and her friend and rival, a tempestuous Spanish beauty who makes more than one play for Marlowe. There's a lot of discussion about a photograph taken of Mavis in a nightclub in which she is sitting with a gangster who was supposed to be in jail at the time. And there are more corpses and murderers before the story is done.

Perhaps it's because so many years have gone by since the publication of Little Sister, but the book today almost reads like a parody. Of course there have been so many similar types of stories in the years between, and Chandler -- who is a good writer -- was one of the earlier practitioners of the 

genre, but much of the book borders on the idiotic, and the dialogue doesn't often ring true. The worst thing I can say about the book is that it is neither especially suspenseful nor even entertaining. Were this the first book of Chandler's I'd ever read, I would probably not have read another. There are some good sequences, however, such as when Detective French defends his police department. The story was filmed as Marlowe with James Garner playing the private eye.

Verdict: Chandler has written better books, but this one hasn't stood the test of time. **. 

ADVENTURES OF NICK CARTER

Robert Conrad as Nick Carter

ADVENTURES OF NICK CARTER (1972 telefilm). Director: Paul Krasny. 

Around 1910 in Manhattan private eye Nick Carter (Robert Conrad), learns that his old friend and mentor, Sam Bates (Byron Morrow), has been murdered. Bates was trying to find a young lady named Ivy, who supposedly left town with a young man named Lloyd Deams (Sean Garrison), the paramour of club owner Bess Tucker (Shelley Winters). Nick is hired by Ivy's father-in-law Otis Duncan (Broderick Crawford) to find out what happened to Ivy, although Nick is just as interested in discovering who bumped off Bates. As Nick investigates he encounters Duncan's two sons, the flamboyant and dissipated Freddy (Dean Stockwell) and the much more uptight Neal (Pernell Roberts), not to mention corrupt cop Captain Keller (Neville Brand) and his murderous henchmen. 

Dean Stockwell and Pernell Roberts

Adventures of Nick Carter is based on a character who first appeared in print in the late 19th century. It's been decades since I read any Nick Carter stories but it seemed to me they were a little wilder than this fairly reasonable mystery-detective tale. Robert Conrad had wrapped up his lengthy run on The Wild, Wild West and it was undoubtedly thought that lightning might strike twice with the actor in another suspenseful period piece, but Nick Carter did not become a series. Conrad is okay as Carter, basically playing himself, but he gets fine support from the other cast members named above, as well as from Pat O'Brien as the head of a mission who gives Carter tips from time to time. Brooke Bundy is Carter's secretary, and the awful singer Jaye P. Morgan shows up very briefly as a forgettable chanteuse. The best performances are from Dean Stockwell and Pernell Roberts as the two highly unalike siblings. Nick Carter was later turned into a kind of super-spy in a series of lurid paperback books and was also featured in the foreign parody Dinner for Adele. 

Verdict: Could have made an interesting series, although not as much fun as The Wild, Wild West. ***.  

KOMMISSAR X: KILL PANTHER KILL

Brad Harris and Tony Kendall escape from a trap

KOMMISSAR X: KILL PANTHER KILL (aka Kommissar X - Drei blaue Panther/1968.) Director: Gianfranco Parolini. 

Jo Louis Walker (Tony Kendall) and Captain Tom Rowland (Brad Harris) re-team to investigate the case of twin brothers (Franco Fantasia) who are in the stolen gem business. As usual, there's an amusing love/hate relationship between the two men as they dodge bullets, romance gals, and get involved in a terrific and protracted karate fight where they manage to defeat all of their opponents in record time. There's a flying jet pack like something out of James Bond, but generally this "Kommissar X" adventure is not a typical eurospy film, and the 007-isms are kept to a minimum. The best sequence has Walker trapped when his leg is caught in some mud and he appears to be flattened by a bulldozer, distressing Rowland, who is gratified to find him alive. This high-spirited flick is one of the better Kommissar X adventures. 

Verdict: Playful and fun. ***. 

THE KNIFE SLIPPED Erle Stanley Gardner

THE KNIFE SLIPPED. A Cool and Lam novel by A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner). Written 1939. Hard Case Crime/Titan; 2016.

NOTE: On occasion B Movie Nightmare will review genre books as well as movies. 

Erle Stanley Gardner is most famous as the creator of Perry Mason, but he also wrote many books in a crime series devoted to the exploits of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. Cool is a obese but solid middle-aged woman who has a tough, no-nonsense approach and is primarily concerned with making money for herself through her small detective agency that takes cases other agencies won't touch, such as divorces and political assignments. Her chief operative is the much younger and smaller Donald Cool, a twenty-something who may be short but is still good-looking enough to attract many of the ladies he encounters. He, however, is not that much good in a fight and "the little runt," as Bertha calls him, takes a beating more than once. 

The Knife Slipped was originally to be published as the second in the series, but the publisher rejected it, finding Cool's depiction too mercenary and sordid, among other things. The book was not published (posthumously) until many years later. The Knife Slipped has Cool and Lam taking on a woman client who feels that her son-in-law is cheating on her daughter with a blond. This son-in-law is later murdered, and there are numerous suspects, including a switchboard operator at his apartment house that Donald becomes stuck on. Lam has an almost 21st century attitude toward women and their sexuality, and Cool is cynical (or realistic) about certain aspects of life and love. The Knife Slipped is entertaining and well-written, but frankly it seems a cut below similar books by, say, Raymond Chandler. I've read only one other Cool and Lam book and felt the same way -- good but forgettable. 

However, if you're crazy about private detective fiction, I must say that Bertha Cool and Donald Lam are unusual operatives and highly interesting characters. That alone makes their stories of interest. And one of these days I may pick up another one in the series.

Verdict: Perry Mason might be appalled by these two. **3/4.