The Cheap Detective 1978 detective movie
The Cheap Detective (1978, United States)
Lou Peckinpaugh is your ordinary private detective, living in a cheap apartment and running his tiny agency from a cheap office downtown. He is not a big spender, he has a loyal secretary that runs his business for him, he has a partner that suddenly ends up dead and he have a mistress, who happens to be the wife of his partner. That day did not start well for Lou, but things will only get worse. The police is convinced he had something to do with death of his business partner and there are more people killed in unusual way, which they also try to pin on him. To make things a bit more complicated a case lands on his lap that only on surface is gonna go smoothly - it looks like quite few people are after a treasure in the form of twelve large egg-shaped diamonds.
A cheap (in every sense of the word) detective, high-class clients, tough cops, who are out to get him, the string of women in his life - it all sounds like a cliche. Because it all is. Neil Simon, author of many successful comedies wrote the screenplay for this parody of 1930s and 1940s detectives and the movies like The Maltese Falcon or Casablanca. Peter Falk, most widely known for his role of Detective Columbo in the TV series, here played a spoof of Philip Marlowe and other detectives of the classic movies, in a form of a slightly inept detective, who tries to survive when his whole world crumbles around him. It is a very good parody of noir detective stories and pretty good comedy on its own merit.
Can you solve a case like this?
add a commentComment below
Discover more
If you look for more true crime, you can read more it on the mystery library, Mystery & True Crime Stories. unsolved mysteries
Watch The Cheap Detective
The Cheap Detective videos
The Cheap Detective
Creators of The Cheap Detective
Cast of The Cheap Detective
Old Time Radio
Old time radio shows - comedies, crime stories, thrillers, horrors, science fiction.... visit
Murder at Merivale Manor
Murder mystery case file - Murder at Merivale Manor. Solve the crime with your friends.
Similar detective movies
On the Other Side of the Tracks
Two policemen from two different worlds have to cooperate to solve the case that baffles the police in Paris.
Murder on the Orient Express
Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and his most famous case - the murder on the most famous train in the world and victim that was poisoned before being stabbed several times.
Black Coal, Thin Ice
In 1999 Chinese police found the parts of dismembered body of a coal worker in different coal depots. After short investigation detective Zhang finds a suspect, but after he is killed in a shoot-out the case is dropped. Five years later another victim is found in similar circumstances.