"In spite of the show’s out-of-this-world premise – a man in space forced to watch bad movies alongside two wisecracking robots – the inspiration for many a host segment on Mystery Science Theater 3000 was decidedly down to Earth. Take the 1996 episode where they tackled ’70s schlockfest The Incredible Melting Man, during which budding filmmaker Crow T. Robot gets the chance to realize his dream project, Earth vs. Soup, which a major studio has bankrolled to the tune of…

“First and foremost, we had gone and done probably the stupidest thing we could do for our feature-film debut – a comedy about depression.”

So says Kevin McDonald in The Kids in the Hall: One Dumb Guy, Paul Myers’s biography of the troupe, which had barely wrapped production on its fifth and final season when producer Lorne Michaels got them a development deal at Paramount. Various ideas were kicked around until the five Kids plus head writer Norm Hiscock landed…

"That was fun. I love robbing the English. They're so polite."

A few of the elements in The Silent Partner reminded me of this -- the robbery that kicks the plot into motion, the safety deposit box and its all-important key, the tank full of exotic fish that are threatened by a violent maniac -- and I've had the Arrow Blu-ray for ages, so the time seemed ripe to revisit one of my favorite British comedies.

I have no idea…

"Now that's the beautiful part of it, isn't it? I know who you are, and you're in the dark."

A milquetoast bank teller named Miles, whose most interesting hobby is collecting exotic fish, gets one over on a robber casing his bank dressed as Santa Claus, but getting away clean with the $48,350 he snagged proves to be more of a challenge. This film came up a lot after Christopher Plummer's passing and I can see why because he's riveting…

This "film" has a running time of about 79 minutes. Here's how that breaks down:

5.5% - Kirk Cameron's smug, hot chocolate-obsessed introduction
3% - A seemingly unmotivated cutaway to what looks like a much more interesting movie but is, in fact, not (Bonus: We get to see this footage again in its entirety when it's placed in the proper context)
2.5% - Cheaply animated opening credits set to a ska cover of "Silent Night"
7.5% - Kirk's "brother-in-law" --…