Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid Review

Although I have watched and enjoyed hundreds, if not thousands, of movies since I was a young boy in the 1960s and 1970s, I have to admit that I tend to favor certain genres at the expense of others.

For instance, if you were to have me choose - for non-review purposes - between Nights in Rodanthe and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, two movies which were released in 2008, you can bet your snapbrim fedora that I'll pick Steven Spielberg's action-packed adventure over George Wolffe's melodramatic adaptation of Nicholas Sparks' weepy  novel.   (And this would have been true even if the latter had been as good as, say,  Love Story, which it is definitely not.)  So, the genre now -rightly or not - labeled "Chick Flicks" is one which I endeavor to avoid.

A more guy-oriented genre I hardly ever watch is film noir, a term coined by the French that encompasses the "hard-boiled detective" movies of the 1940s and early 1950s.  Based on stories in the styile of novels by Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane, film noir movies often feature troubled and down-on-their-luck (or at least trouble-prone) private investigators who are drawn into a web of intrigue and murder while taking on a case, which often involved a beautiful woman in one way or another.

While I have seen a few noirs- my favorite one being the original version of D.O.A. -  in my day, I have to be honest when I say that if I have to choose between watching Suspicion or Black Sunday, I'll more than likely pick the latter, even though I think Alfred Hitchcock was the "master of suspense."

Perhaps this might sound contradictory, but even though I'm not a big noir buff, I'm a big fan of Carl Reiner's delightfully funny Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, a dead-on spoof of the entire genre which stars Steve Martin, the "wild and crazy guy" who had wowed audiences on TV's Saturday Night Live and 1979's The Jerk, which (not coincidentally) was also directed by Carl Reiner.

Co-written by Martin, Reiner and George Gipe (whose all-too-brief career includes The Man With Two Brains), this 1982 comedy stars the witty and debonair comedian/screenwriter/actor/novelist as Rigby Reardon, a private investigator who, as is often the case in film noir movies, is drawn into an intricate web of intrigue and deathly perils when a gorgeous dame hires him to investigate the disappearance of her apparently dead father.

As in the 1980 airplane-in-distress spoof Airplane! the comedy is often derived from a clever twist on the conventions of a film genre that's familiar to most viewers.  Here, Rachel Ward, the sultry Australian actress best known for her starring role in The Thorn Birds, plays Juliet Forrest, the daughter of chemist/cheese maker Dr. Forrest (George Gaynes), who has been reported killed in a recent car crash.

Juliet doesn't believe the stories in the media and suspects that her father has been abducted.  But knowing that she can't prove her theory to the police without proof, she hires Reardon, supposedly one of L.A.'s best private eyes and mentor/senior partner to Phillip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart).

Reardon accepts - otherwise the movie would have ended, right? - and starts pounding the streets and dark alleys of 1940s L.A., interacting with characters played by Bogey, Ingrid Bergman, Alan Ladd, Cary Grant, Veronica Lake, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster and Vincent Price.

Rigby Reardon: Carlotta was the kind of town where they spell trouble T-R-U-B-I-L, and if you try to correct them, they kill you.

Drad Men Don't Wear Plaid relies on several essential elements in order to rise above the usual Mel Brooksian film genre spoof. 

The most obvious, of course, is the script by Reiner, Gipe and Martin, which blends high-concept comedic spins on the conventions of noirs with lowbrow jokes and pun-filled dialog. 

For instance, Reardon is not only seen onscreen as he digs deeper into the disappearance of his client's dad and the existence of the "Friends of Carlotta/Enemies of Carlotta" lists that are Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid's "McGuffin," but he also provides the voice-over narration that is commonly heard in films of the genre:

Rigby Reardon: All of a sudden I had to remember some words that Marlowe had told me over fifteen years ago: Dead men don't wear plaid. Hm. Dead men don't wear plaid. I still don't know what it means.

The screenplay is also rife with hilarious and often ribald spins on classic lines from noirs, such as this one by Juliet:

Juliet Forrest: If you need me, just call. You know how to dial, don't you? You just put your finger in the hole and make tiny little circles.

The movie also depends heavily on the inclusion of cleverly spliced footage from a plethora of PI-themed movies of the late 1940s and early 1950s to allow the 1980s cast members (which include Remi Santoni, Charlie Picermi and Carl Reiner) to interact with characters played by Wally Brown, James Cagney, William Conrad, Jeff Corey, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Brian Donlevy, Kirk Douglas, Ava Gardner, Cary Grant, Veronica Lake, Charles Laughton,Fred MacMurray, Charles McGraw, Ray Milland, Edmond O'Brien,  Vincent Price, Barbara Stanwyck and Lana Turner.

This particular element works extremely well, thanks mainly to the hard work of editor Bud Molin, who also helped "cut" other works in Steve Martin's filmography, including The Jerk, The Man With Two Brains and All of Me.  Molin's fine eye for detail and great sense of comic timing allowed him to match 1981-shot footage to archival one from the 1940s and 1950s almost seamlessly.

As in 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the high-tech trickery works very well because every other aspect of the movie was well-thought out.  The script is both faithful to the structure and conventions of the genre it takes such a big delight in spoofing and deliciously irreverent, while the acting is extremely good, even in the (deliberately) over-the-top bits.

Of course, the film would have been disastrous had there been no chemistry between Martin and the sexy Ward, but the two leads are believable (and hilarious) as Rigby and Juliet.  Ward's obvious physical allure is used for both dramatic and comedic effect as she plays the prototypcal "mysterious client" who may or may not be also a femme fatale.

Rigby Reardon: [narrating] Was she real? There was only one way to find out. But I remember Marlowe's words.
Rigby Reardon: What the hell does Marlowe know?
Rigby Reardon: [narrating] She was real alright.
Juliet Forrest: What are you doing?
Rigby Reardon: Adjusting your breasts. You fainted and they... shifted all outta whack. There.
Juliet Forrest: Thank you.
Rigby Reardon: You're welcome.

Another interesting bit of trivia - if perhaps a sad one - is that Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid was the last project for two Hollywood legends.   Composer Miklos Rozsa retired from film scoring and costume designer Edith Head died before the movie's 1982 release.