Dead Men don’t Wear Plaid (1982) Les cadavres ne portent pas de comstard.
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 28 minutes, rated 6.8 by 23,000 cinematizens.
Genre: Comedy Noir.
Verdict: One of a kind.
Tagline: ‘You do know how to dial, don’t you?’
It all started when she walked into his life, well, in fact she fell into his arms at seeing the headline on the newspaper he was reading: ‘The Dodgers lose again!’ Dem bums!
Thus begins the Tec’s search for the frenemies of his favourite brunette, Carlotta. Along the way he enlists Marlowe as a legman, whose motto is ‘Guns don’t kill but love does.’ He also issues the title line. [No spoiler.]
Partly parody, mostly homage to US film noir of the post-World War II era, as the bumbling Tec follows the trail, none too coherently, meeting, in addition to Humphrey Bogart’s Marlowe, Cary Grant, Alan Ladd, Barbara Stanwick, Bette Davis, Lana Turner, and more in some brilliant cutting.
When all the fun is done, the closing dedication is the golden touch because it is to all the invisible talents who put the noir into noir, the cinematographers, the camera men, focus pullers, the composers, the musicians, the prop men, the designers, the set builders, the costumers, the audio engineers, and so on. They put the magic on the screen where it has stayed since.
I had forgotten how much I liked this movie until I watched it again.