Cheap Detective, The

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You don´t have to be familiar with "Casablanca" or "The Maltese Falcon" to appreciate the humor of "The Cheap Detective," but it helps. Writer Neil Simon has thoroughly spoofed both of these classics but at the same time provided enough funny material to keep anyone entertained who hasn´t seen the two old movies. With Peter Falk doing his best Bogart imitation, this 1978 release is among the best parodies Hollywood has made. It´s a welcome addition to anyone´s DVD comedy library.

The story is set in what´s said to be a fictional city called San Francisco, just before America´s entry into World War II. The hero is private-eye Lou Peckinpaugh (Falk), a Sam Spade takeoff who spouts Dashiell Hammett-like dialogue ("Get him off my back"). It´s also an extension of the Sam Diamond character Falk played in another of Simon´s detective send ups, "Murder By Death," a couple of years earlier. Falk gives it his best shot, purposefully sounding like a cheap imitation of Bogey, wearing laundry tags on his underwear, and pulling mixed drinks out his desk and bureau drawers. He perfectly deadpans every line and seems to be enjoying himself immensely. As with any film-noir mystery thriller, he gets involved with a femme fatale, only in Pechinpaugh´s case, it´s a whole bevy of them.

First, there´s Marsha Mason as Georgia Merkle ("Oh, Georgia, I had you on my mind"); she´s the wife of Lou´s recently murdered partner, and she´s Lou´s partner in her own extramarital affair. The police are a little suspicious of Lou and Georgia, under the circumstances. Next, there´s Madeline Kahn as Mrs. Montenegro, or any of a dozen other assorted names she supplies from Mary Jones to Norma Shearer. She is, of course, doing the Mary Astor part in "The Maltese Falcon," who identified herself in the course of the older film by several different names. Kahn is always good in comedy, and like the rest of the cast delivers a performance of dedicated seriousness, all the more funny for never betraying her goofy role with a wink or a nod.

Then, there´s Eileen Brennan Ms. Betty DeBoop, a floozy saloon singer that Lou picks up in Nix Place, a waterfront night club that doubles for Rick´s Cafe Americain in "Casablanca." Brennan is, if anything, even more deliberately buzzed out than Kahn and does a hilarious humming song in the club. Following her, there´s Louise Fletcher in the pivotal role of Marlene DuChard, a former lover of Lou´s and now the wife of a celebrated resistance fighter, Paul DuChard (Fernando Lamas). Lou and Marlene meet by coincidence in Nix Place after many years apart. Fletcher, dressed in white and spouting patriotic gibberish is, naturally, Simon´s slightly twisted version of Ingrid Bergman, and Fletcher is right as rain in the part. Darn, even Lamas as the befuddled Paul (for Henreid) DuChard is good, effecting some of the best and funniest dramatic pauses in the film. After that, there´s Stockard Channing as Bess, Lou´s faithful, young, and innocent secretary. She´s a darling. And finally, there´s the big gun, Ann-Margret, as the queen of femme fatales, Jezebel Dezire, wife of the old codger Ezra Dezire (Sid Caesar), who owns the Golden Gate Bridge! Jezebel is, well, something else again.

How all of this ties together is almost unfathomable, except to say that Lou is trying to find the killer of his late partner, trying to ward off all the dames, and trying to help the DuChards open a two-star French restaurant in Oakland (across the Bay from the fabled San Francisco) and help the cause of Free France. John Houseman shows up as Jasper Blubber (think Sydney Greenstreet as "the Fat Man") in a surprisingly funny caricature from this usually somber producer and actor; and Dom DeLuise is Pepe Damascus, in an amusingly bizarre burlesque of Peter Lorre.

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