Carl Reiner's extremely silly parody of the detective films of the 40s and 50s has Steve Martin as a Sam Spade type private eye.
When a mysterious woman turns up at his office with a story about her father being murdered, Rigby Reardon finds himself dragged into a world of murder, blackmail, Nazis...and cheese!
Steve Martin's second film with Reiner is a pretty silly but clever comedy where the action is cut together with scenes from classic gangster and detective movies so we end up with Martin and Rachel Ward, the female lead, interacting with people like Bogart, Alad Ladd, Ava Gardner and many more. The running argument between Martin and Bogart about Bogie's tie is particularly fun. The one-liners and quick sight-gags, Juliet sucking bullets out of Rigbys arm for instance, come thick and fast and although it comes to a bit of a Mel Brooks type ending, a slight feeling that they really weren't sure how to finish so it slightly collapses, for the most part it holds together pretty well. Steve Martin was an extremely talented young comic and his partnerships with the Reiners in this, The Jerk and The Man with Three Brains were very funny but what I really like about this one is that it opens a door to some great noir that an audience for this sort of madcap comedy might not have seen before.
Scenes are taken from This Gun for Hire, Lost Weekend and The Killers to name but a few.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083798/?ref_=nv_sr_1
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