The Cheap Detective (1978)

I love this movie so much

Touches You

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

It's 1939 in fictitious city of San Francisco. Lou Peckinpaugh (Peter Falk) is a private detective whose partner Floyd is killed in a mass shooting. He is immediately the prime suspect for having a fling with Floyd's wife Georgia Merkle (Marsha Mason). He gets a call from the mysterious Denise Montenegro and various other names (Madeline Kahn). He gets a different call from Pepe Damascus (Dom DeLuise) leading to a Casablanca-like club where Betty DeBoop (Eileen Brennan) is singing. Pepe wants to hire him to find an object. Paul (Fernando Lamas) and Marlene DuChard (Louise Fletcher) are hounded freedom fighters who insist on starting a 2 star french restaurant in Oakland.The Neil Simon dialog is so sharp that it goes in a loop. He's trying to spoof various noir movies by making the characters weirder. However he's not able to nail the jokes. It's not his style to do the ridiculous spoofs. These jokes don't make one laugh as much as one understands them intellectually. There are also a lot of great actors in this and most of them are not natural comedians. It doesn't work.

Great Film! Funny and "proper" ... people cared about the way they dressed and talked to their fellow man or woman in the time period of the movie (1940s), they were NOT distracted with modern technology, they were NOT in a hurry like modern people, they had time to "LIVE" in the "MOMENT" and enjoy it, the script or conversation of the film shows this very nicely, the whole atmosphere of the film as created in the studio with all the props and the clothes worn by the actors were a great match for the script and dialog of the movie!-tibor

Why does a lady bring a bike into Lou's apartment? It must be a copy from another movie, but which one? I enjoyed this movie immensely! I could follow most of the action that is from other movies. Favorite character: tough to choose - but I go with Peter Falk. I also enjoyed Stockard Channing as his secretary. And the line where she says, "She's prettier, but I'm easier." And later when she wants Lou to "Thank her". I liked this much better than "Murder by Death". It was good but "The Cheap Detective" is better. I was looking for Phil Silvers, too, like many others. I have read he's in the last scene as the taxi driver. And there was a LOT of ladies in that taxi with Lou.

Meaning the creators of Airplane obviously. The dialogue in this one is so reminiscent of Airplane. That would mean since this one came out a full 2 years before Airplane did, those guys musta saw this one and said, "That's the dialogue we need." I wonder if Neil Simon ever got a call up with either of them saying, "Hey, thanks for Cheap Detective, it made or careers." LOL The only difference in the 2 movies is that this one is a stinker. The screenplay was just not very well done. Louise Fletcher was so miscast in this its just a slap in the face. She was dry as a bone in this. Almost painful to watch. Peter Falk is a character in everything he does, but even he couldn't save this one. Airplane got a lot of things connected all at once whereas this just had the snappy dialogue. Simon shoulda went on vacation somewhere and gave this script a few more weeks/months, it would have helped.