01
The Cheap Detective
Why this pick
A brisk, joke-dense noir pastiche with a hard-boiled investigator, smoky intrigue, and affectionate parody of classic Hollywood detective conventions.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE1982 1h 29m USA
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
Comedy
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, try these.
01
02
Murder by Death
Why this pick
Its all-star comic mystery plays gleefully with the rules and personalities of golden-age detective stories, matching the film-savvy spoofing of Reiner’s noir collage.
03
The Big Sleep
Why this pick
A knowingly outrageous send-up of Raymond Chandler-style private-eye plotting, full of deadpan delivery, lurid clues, and deliberately tangled noir business.
04
Hammett
Why this pick
For the same shadowy period-detective pleasures without the broad parody: a stylized, self-aware noir built around pulp atmosphere and a writer-detective hero.
05
The Long Goodbye
Why this pick
A wry, off-kilter reinvention of the private-eye film, with a bemused gumshoe drifting through a sunlit but deeply strange noir world.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
Juliet Forrest, the daughter of noted scientist and cheesemaker John Hay Forrest, asks private investigator Rigby Reardon to investigate her father's death, which she believes to have been murder. Searching Dr. Forrest's lab Rigby finds two lists, one titled "Friends of Carlotta" (FOC) and the other "Enemies of Carlotta" (EOC), as well as an affectionately autographed photo of singer Kitty Collins, whose name appears on one of the lists. His search is interrupted by a man posing as an exterminator, who shoots Rigby in the arm and frisks the lists from the seemingly dead investigator.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Steve Martin
Rigby Reardon
Rachel Ward
Juliet Forrest
Reni Santoni
Carlos Rodriguez
George Gaynes
Dr. Forrest
Francis X. McCarthy
Waiter
Carl Reiner
Juliets Butler/Feldmarschall Wilfried von Kluck
Cheryl Smith
Veronica Lake