THE GRETA GARBO MURDER CASE

Baxt with yet another exhumation of the old Hollywood (The Talking Pictures Murder Case, 1990, etc.)—this time set in the first months of WW II, when the town is flooded with expatriate Germans like Erich Von Stroheim. He's directing a movie about Joan of Arc starring Greta Garbo, who's also playing a real-life detective in what seems to be a Nazi plot centered around the movie's backer. That's Albert Guiss, billed as the world's richest man and surrounded by a raft of toadies mingling with FBI agents (disguised as lackeys of one sort or another). Poisoned bodies drop like flies; Garbo acts like looney tunes; and the pointless, disjointed plot is unenhanced by tedious name-dropping and artificial dialogue. Strictly for fans of long-inferred gossip about long-inferred greats and their satellites.