Laugh... or I'll blow your lips off!


In this post-modernist exercise, star/writer Steve Martin and director Carl Reiner spoof the film noir yarns of the '40s with Martin playing gumshoe Rigby Reardon, who interacts with a legion of Hollywood greats -- including Humphrey Bogart, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Edward Arnold, Barbara Stanwyck, Ingrid Bergman, Veronica Lake, Bette Davis, Lana Turner and Joan Crawford -- in a succession of intercut clips from seventeen vintage Hollywood films. Rigby is a low-rent detective (his fee is $10 per day) sitting in his office, waiting for something to happen. That something happens when the voluptuous Juliet Forrest (Rachel Ward) arrives in his office and faints dead away at the sight of a newspaper that reports on her father's death in a car accident. Juliet is convinced that her father was murdered and offers Rigby $200 to investigate. Upon searching Mr. Forrest's office, he comes upon a list of names under the headings "The Friends and Enemies of Carlotta." As the two delve deeper into the mystery and its requisite deceptions, they encounter an "exterminator," Juliet's surly Nazi butler, Field Marshal Von Kluck (Carl Reiner) and an overly helpful Mexican friend, Carlos Rodriguez (Reni Santoni). ~


Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is a 1982 comedy-mystery film directed by Carl Reiner. Starring Steve Martin and Rachel Ward, the film is both a parody of, and an homage to, film noir and the pulp detective movies of the 1940s.
Edited by Bud Molin, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is a collage film incorporating clips from 18 different vintage films. They are combined with more recent footage of Martin and other actors similarly shot in black-and-white, with the result that the original dialogue and acting of the classic films have now become part of a completely different story.
Among the actors who appear from classic films are Edward Arnold, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Wally Brown, James Cagney, William Conrad, Jeff Corey, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Brian Donlevy, Kirk Douglas, Ava Gardner, Cary Grant, Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Burt Lancaster, Charles Laughton, Charles McGraw, Fred MacMurray, John Miljan, Ray Milland, Edmund O'Brien, Vincent Price, Barbara Stanwyck, Lana Turner and Norma Varden.
This was the last film for both costume designer Edith Head and composer Miklós Rózsa.


The film holds a 77% "fresh" rating at the Internet criticism aggregation site, Rotten Tomatoes.[2] In his review for Newsweek magazine, David Ansen wrote, "A one joke movie? Perhaps, but it's such an engaging joke that anyone who loves old movies will find it irresistible. And anyone who loves Steve Martin will be fascinated by his sly performance, which is pitched exactly between the low comedy of The Jerk and the highbrow Brechtianisms of Pennies from Heaven."[3] Vincent Canby's review for The New York Times praised Martin's performance: "the film has an actor who's one of America's best sketch artists, a man blessed with a great sense of timing, who is also self-effacing enough to meet the most cockeyed demands of the material."[4] Time magazine's Richard Corliss wrote, "The gag works for a while, as Martin weaves his own plot-web into the 18 old movies, but pretty soon he's traveling on old good will and flop sweat".

Release Date: May 21, 1982

Distrib: Universal

Boxoffice: $18,196,170 2013: $50,503,700