Recovered Classic: Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid


This is Steve Martin’s second appearance in a Recovered Classic and it finds him on familiar territory, playing it for laughs as opposed to playing it straight, as he did in earlier entry The Spanish Prisoner.

Probably one of the comic’s lesser known films, it’s arguably one of his funniest and stands out not only due to the quality of the achingly amusing script, but also because of its brilliantly daring concept, which sees clips from classic film noirs exhumed from the vaults to allow Martin to be seamlessly inserted into scenes alongside a succession of Hollywood greats.

It’s an audacious idea which pre-empted Forrest Gump by a decade, but it works fantastically well. Shot in black and white, director Carl Reiner (who also takes a small but pivotal role as a boo-hiss Nazi bad guy) fashioned a convoluted but striking spoof of (and homage to) 1940s private eye flicks which proves to be a superb showcase for Martin’s comedic talents and deserves wholesome praise for its startling technical achievements.

Looking quite the part in his natty threads, Martin stars as backstreet gumshoe Rigby Reardon, who’s hired by the devastatingly attractive Juliet Forrest (Rachel Ward) to solve the case of her dead father, who was apparently killed in a car accident, but whom she believes was murdered.

In terms of plot, there’s no need for further enlightenment because the mystery merely serves as an excuse for Reardon to go hunting for clues, a quest which sees him rub shoulders with the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Veronica Lake, Burt Lancaster, Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck, Cary Grant, Lana Turner and a glittering array of other late, great Hollywood icons. A full rundown of the performers and the movies the clips were taken from is provided at the end, which means you can just sit back and marvel at how cleverly the script was developed in order to fit around the dialogue from the original movies, so giving them an entirely new spin.

And when he’s not being drugged, having to disguise himself as a blonde bombshell, going berserk at the mention of the words “cleaning woman”, being beaten up or getting shot (an excuse for Ward to suck out the bullets), Martin is delivering the sort of comedy shtick which helped to make his name. His romantic sparring with Ward provides much of the humour, but it’s the one-liners which throw up the best of the laugh-out-loud moments.

“I hadn’t seen a body put together like that since I’d solved the case of the murdered girl with the big tits,” is admittedly one of the cruder examples, but there’s plenty more where that came from courtesy of Martin’s consistently funny voiceover. No surprise either to find his name credited as one of the scriptwriters alongside Reiner.

It goes without saying that it’s all completely silly (the whole thing revolves around a preposterous cheese bomb plot after all) but at the same time it remains an extremely accomplished, fiendishly clever and downright hilarious film which easily stands up to repeat viewings.

If you prefer your Steve Martin more The Man With Two Brains and All of Me than Father of the Bride and Housesitter (and let’s face it, who doesn’t?) then this is, quite frankly, an absolute must-see.

David Lichtneker

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