As the Revenging Manta was reconciling with his brother, Albert Simmons, the accountant for the Goose Lord gang, I heard a howl coming from the far side of the room. Edwige, my kangaroo companion from my misadventures in North America, was in a panic over the slumped over body of Waldo. I had forgotten that he was bleeding out and I was supposed to bandage him up. I got distracted by the loss of my Beanie Babies. Oh, well. — To be continued. 

Tonight’s movie is 2014’s A Walk Among the Tombstones from director Scott Frank. I thought this would be a great pick for Thrillervember here at The Museum of Schlock. It stars Liam Neeson at Detective Matt Scudder, a retired NYPD detective whose drinking problem made him retire from the force. Back in 1991, there was an incident when he was having two shots and a cup of coffee at a bar. Some gang members shot up the bartender and he followed in close pursuit. He killed them, but one of the bullets ricocheted off of the pavement and hit a little girl in the eye. Maybe if Detective Scudder had skipped his Irish breakfast and stayed at home, playing Sonic the Hedgehog on his Sega Genesis and eating Fruity Pebbles, none of this would have happened. 

Fast forward eight years and Scudder is attending AA meetings and working as an unlicensed private investigator. A former addict from his meetings wants to employ his services. Seems his brother is a narcotics distributor and he needs Scudder to investigate a couple of sickos who kidnapped his wife and murdered her. The drug trafficker paid 400 grand to get her back, but they gave her back to him in pieces.

Scudder is reluctant at first, but realizes these sickos have done this sort of thing before and will do it again. These serial killers target family members of drug lords because they won’t go to the police. Scudder is the only one that can stop him. 

Frankly, I think Scudder should have stayed out of it, stayed at home and played Sonic Adventure on the Sega Dreamcast and eating Cocoa Pebbles. While fumbling around with the microfiche at a local public library, he befriends a young street urchin named TJ (Brian “Astro” Bradley). He needs TJ’s help to find newspaper articles through this new fangled thing called the Internet. Scudder didn’t bother to brush up as he figures Y2K is going to wipe everything out in a few months anyway. I thought the same thing back in 1999. I took a trip down to Reno, lost my entire college tuition betting on red. I figured the banks would go belly up after the new year so what the hey. Imagine my surprise when everything turned out fine. 

Eventually, we see things from the killers’ perspective, a couple of creepers named Ray (David Harbour) and Albert (Adam David Thompson). They’re disappointed when they learn that a drug trafficker named Yuri (Sebastian Roché) has a wife that’s in a coma. No fun in that, but they get really excited when they learn he has a young daughter. They make plans to kidnap her and charge a ransom like before. This is just depraved. Yeah, drug traffickers are bad, but leave the kids out of it! Scudder steps in to help negotiate the ransom for Yuri, but will they get his daughter back? Will Liam Neeson have a violent confrontation with a couple of deranged serial killers? What do you think?

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, episode 599, episode 642, episode 643, episode 644, and episode 645) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.