Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

A drug-peddling gangster supplying the local Beatnik scene, gets bored of partying and comes up with a plan to commit a "perfect" murder. He gets his sycophantic sidekick to give a glass-laden burger to a delivery boy, who soon dies of his internal wounds. The inept local police department's enquiries quickly run dry so the victim's determined brother decides to continue investigating privately. He eventually uncovers the plot, and the culprits and tracks them down to meet out justice.Some of the cast give very pedestrian performances, but Peter Falk alone manages to rescue this otherwise average murder mystery and fully explores the dark depths of his character in every scene. He is thoroughly convincing as a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing Beatnik gangster, looking out of place among his Beatnik disciples but influencing them with his intellectual nihilism. The movie, although poorly written and directed feels quite atmospheric reminiscent of older Film Noir. The Beatnik theme of the movie doesn't go too far - this has a darker feel than other such films; Corman's "A Bucket Of Blood" for instance which is a more parodic portrayal of The Beat generation.

Let's get one thing out of the way - I like Peter Falk. In this movie he's restrained, cold, and creepy. Shame the rest of the cast are rubbish.Nico is a fireside philosopher to all the beatniks at the local hangout, giving them their kicks via parties and monologues about life in general, but he's also making his cash from selling them gear and has the mind of a lizard. He's down on the squares and after witnessing the natural death of a newspaper salesman, he plots to up the ante by murdering someone. Thing is, that someone has a brother who won't stop until he find's the murderer.To put it simply - when Falk is on screen this film is a hoot. He's really playing a man without a soul who has to go to extremes to even feel anything (and even then there's doubt regarding whether or not that happens). He uses every single other character in the film and only looks vaguely surprised when it all backfires. However, a good half of the film is set around the victim's brother, and this makes the film slow to a crawl.However - worth a look for Pre-Colombo Falk playing the bad guy, other than that, this film is for squares, daddy-o.

Poorly acted, poorly scripted, choppy edited, and poorly transfered onto DVD, this film barely gets above sedate pulse rate mode. The plot promises much, man takes investigation of murder into his own hands due to ineptitude of investigating detective, well that last line I wrote is about as good as the film gets !. It would be nice if the villain of the piece was actually villainous, but sadly Peter Falk as Nico just doesn't instill any sort of menace and worse still is that he is surrounded by cartoonish followers who act like they are in a Bugs Bunny cartoon instead of the beatnik classic some seem to think this is.There is no tension worth writing about, and the finale brings about cries of relief that it's over rather than the nod of approval I'm sure the makers were hoping for, I have no idea what the budget for the movie was, but if it was more than the price of a bacon sandwich then the makers should spend 52 weeks in the stocks whilst we throw rancid tomatoes at them.I give it a generous 2/10 for the delightful Jazz beat score and the brave attempt from Barbara Lord to act with any sort of honest dignity in amongst the swamp of pain.Pah.

Nico, seller of dreams, off on an intellectual kick to give death a new meaning. OK nice premise but this movie is so SLOW. It makes me want to be square if this is what rebellion is like. There were some good parts, I can't believe I am saying this but I liked Peter Falk's character, the crime should have been perfect, and the over acting of Frances was even good for a few laughs. But I could never get into this movie. Maybe because the plot was so predictable Columbo could have figured it out without the "by the way" questioning. Perhaps I was expecting more gore since this was included in a Schlockfest movie pack called Gore and More. No, I think it is that I had to check my pulse repeatedly to make sure I was still alive, and had the snooze alarm set for every 4 minutes trying to keep me awake. I had to attempt 3 times to cover parts I slept through - Quite an accomplishment for an 1 hour movie. This is a completely forgettable movie - pass it over when you get the option.