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.
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