The Cheap Detective (1978)

Director:

Robert Moore

Writer:

Neil Simon (written by)

Release Date:

23 June 1978 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Crime | Mystery | Romance | Thriller

Tagline:

Who dunnit? This time it's Neil Simon who's really dunnit.

Plot:

A combined parody of The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1942): San Francisco, 1940, detectives, dames, documents, Nazis, a treasure...

Plot Keywords:

Detective | Beautiful Woman | Sequel | Second Part

Cast

Peter Falk	...	Lou Peckinpaugh
Ann-Margret	...	Jezebel Dezire
Eileen Brennan	...	Betty DeBoop
Sid Caesar	...	Ezra Dezire
Stockard Channing	...	Bess
James Coco	...	Marcel
Dom DeLuise	...	Pepe Damascus
Louise Fletcher	...	Marlene DuChard
John Houseman	...	Jasper Blubber
Madeline Kahn	...	Mrs. Montenegro
Fernando Lamas	...	Paul DuChard
Marsha Mason	...	Georgia Merkle
Phil Silvers	...	Hoppy
Abe Vigoda	...	Sergeant Rizzuto
Paul Williams	...	Boy

Also Known As:

Neil Simon's The Cheap Detective (USA) (complete title)

Runtime:

92 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | German

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:L | Australia:PG | Netherlands:AL | Singapore:PG | Finland:K-12 | Sweden:11 | USA:PG

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

'Madeline Kahn' 'qv' 's character uses 16 names: Denise Manderley, Wanda Coleman, Gilda Dabney, Chloe LaMarr, Alma Chalmers, Alma Palmers, Vivian Purcell, Carmen Montenegro, Diane Glucksman, Mrs. Danvers, Natasha Ublenskaya, Sophie DeVega, Mary Jones, Lady Edwina Morgan St. Paul, Norma Shearer, and Barbara Stanwyck. The name used most is Mrs. Montenegro.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Lou and Marlene are talking in his apartment, her scarf keeps changing position from surrounding her face to trailing down the back of her head.

Quotes:

Lou Peckinpaugh: You said on the phone last night, sir, that you thought that I could be of some service to you.
Jezebel Dezire: Just how good *is* your service?
Lou Peckinpaugh: I try to satisfy.
Jezebel Dezire: Do you charge by the hour or by the satisfaction?

Movie Connections:

Spoofs Casablanca (1942)

Soundtrack:

Heigh Ho

The Cheap Comedy Writer is more like it

I don't think it's imperative that one is a fan of old Bogart movies to watch The Cheap Detective, although it helps. This is Neil Simon's take on such noir classics as Casablanca, To Have And Have Not and The Maltese Falcon, with maybe a little Chinatown thrown in. I've never been much of a Neil Simon enthusiast; mostly, my complaint is that his characters lack depth while all he's really looking for is getting off a good line, a sort of Borscht Belt hunger for audience approval that went out of style about a million years ago. Here, the characters are ready-made, even if they are set up as caricatures for Simon's moderate wit, but even still it falls a little short.

To describe the plot would be almost pointless, since it vaguely resembles the set-up for every private detective movie ever made, good or bad ("of all the cheap joints in the world, she walked into mine" - you get the idea). From there it progresses, or stagnates, through a series of generally identifiable situations from old Bogart movies. I'd be lying if I didn't say there were some good laughs, here and there, either quickie one-liners or blatant knock-off scenes that film buffs will immediately pinpoint with the originals. I liked Dom DeLuise in the Peter Lorre role ("I'm swarthy, smelly, and I reek of cheap perfume") complaining that hotels will only let him stay half the night because of his body odor. John Houseman is great in the Sydney Greenstreet role, as is Madeline Kahn as the Faye Dunaway-ish sort-of-universal femme fatale with her phone book of alias names. On the other hand, Louise Fletcher as Bogie's love interest, with her plaintive pleas of "Louis" reminded me more of Hillary Brooke than Lauren Bacall or Ingrid Bergman, and Peter Falk's Bogart is really just so-so, not much better of an imitation than Don Adams'.

There are some ripe possibilties here for satire that Simon doesn't really take. For instance, if you were a comedy writer spoofing Chinatown, wouldn't you take a shot at the scene where Jack Nicholson gets his nose cut by Roman Polanski then walks around with a big bandage on his nose for half the movie. Instead, he resorts to the obvious and cliched. Neil Simon, to me, is not a true wit, in the same league as, say, Woody Allen. He's an OK, slightly above sitcom level gag writer who gets in just enough funny lines to woo the critics, and a whole lot of garbage to appeal to the masses. I'd say "The Cheap Detective" is about par for a Neil Simon script, and that's not saying much. 2 ** out of 4