I wanted to but couldn't!

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Blistering performances.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Business is slow at Rigby Reardon (Steve Martin)'s private eye agency. Juliet Forrest (Rachel Ward) wants him to investigate the accidental death of her cheese scientist father. She suspects a giant conspiracy. He gets shot and his clue is stolen. Juliet sucks out the bullet. Rigby goes berserk at the mention of cleaning woman.The addition of old film strips is lots of fun. The conflicting sense from the old clips and Steve Martin is a goldmine. It's mostly an one joke movie but Steve Martin keeps it fresh. It also helps to have a love for these old movies. The story does a feeling of randomness. The disconnected old clips serve mostly to have some fun with. In between, Martin deadpans some great gags.

The premise to this is pretty simple: parody film noir movies by inserting old movie clips and have Steve Martin say things that turn serious lines from those movies into jokes. While we're at it, throw in sexy Rachel Ward. It sounds like it could have been a really great comedy. For a fan of film noir and older movies in general like myself, it has an added bonus of getting to revisit all of these great old films through clips. It's fun to see this clip or that and see if you can remember where it comes from. Unfortunately, however, the movie ultimately doesn't work. The reasons for this are twofold. First, the gimmick tires quickly. I think I was over it after about a half hour or so. Second, it's just not that funny. There are a few funny bits, like the cup of java gag that goes on forever. But mostly it's kind of juvenile. Often the movie seems to lose itself in its clips and forgets to turn those clips into something humorous. Martin and Ward are fine in their roles. Maybe Carl Reiner would have been better off trying to do a straight parody film with these two instead of using the clips, which ultimately proved to be a distraction.

In the autumn of 1983 I was visiting Minnesota, and rented this tape. My mother and I watched it (I was 33 then) together. She had obviously seen many of the films used as comic counterpoint to the Martin/Ward side and seen them in THEATRES! Anyway, there was laughter throughout the playback. The scenes that stand out are like the one where Ward's character reads the back of a newspaper that Rigby is reading... and faints. THEN Rigby muses a bit before 'massaging' her breasts... which wakes Ward up "What are you doing?" "Uhhh, when you fell, your breasts were knocked out of whack. I'm trying to re-align them." Or words to that effect. Then at some point Rigby has to think up a name for a saint... and he hesitates for a few beats and then says "Saint Betty." OK, I admit, my mother's name was Betty, so it had more comic impact.The other comments about razor edged inter-cutting of scenes (for comic effect) are very accurate. This was a very good movie to watch straight through, without interruptions.About the "Zelig" film. While that film didn't make as deft use of stock footage, Woody and his technical people were VERY good at inserting the Zelig character into the stock footage itself. So while there are similarities to the two films, to my recollection, there were no Martin scenes inside the film noir excerpts. I think that there was a later Allen film that pretty much sucked where he tried to do large scale image alterations, but Zelig - with the first class narrative done BY a documentary/news personality - made it's points, both as comedy and social commentary.I'll probably check out Zelig and this one on the near future.

I was really interested in seeing this movie, because I like film noir and I like Steve Martin. And you know what, this is a very clever and affectionate homage. My complaints are that the story is disappointingly convoluted so it is sometimes very hard to keep up with what is going on and one or two of the jokes don't quite work. But overall it is very funny, and seems to have held up well over the years. The script is clever and sophisticated enough, and Carl Reiner directs with precision and acts his part of Field Marshall VonKluck very well. The cinematography is smooth and crisp, and I thought the performances were excellent. Steve Martin is great here, not only do I think Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is underrated but this is one of his roles where Martin deserves a lot more credit. Rachel Ward looks lovely as Juliet Forrest and is terrific acting wise. The real joy is watching the archive footage of all those wonderful actors and actresses in those timeless masterpieces. Spotting stars such as Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Bette Davis, Ray Milland, Vincent Price and Ingrid Bergman all but to name a few was a delight in itself. Also the finale while silly is great fun. All in all, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is well worth the look. 8/10 Bethany Cox