Cheap Philip Marlowe, Private Eye: Blackmailers Don't Shoot/Red W (Video) (Peter R. Hunt, Robert Iscove) Price

In this installment of the three-video set, Marlowe (played to the hilt by Powers Boothe) faces two equally tangled webs of desperation and desire. "Blackmailers Don't Shoot" has Marlowe plunging through a labyrinth of double-crosses with a fresh-faced starlet and her psychotic kidnapper at the center. The series as a whole seems to truly hit its stride in "Red Wind," as Marlowe spends a single sleepless, sweltering night roaming the back alleys and luxury apartments of a city tortured by a hot, desert wind--"the kind of wind that makes things happen...crazy things." A mysterious, Benzedrine-sniffing gunman points Marlowe toward crooked politicians, corrupt cops, and a gorgeous dame who knows more than she lets on. But is she worth taking a bullet for? Marlowe tackles the case with his usual combination of muscle and mind power--and at the end of the long night, finds both taxed to their limit. --Grant Balfour