Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid

Once again, we've got a movie that TCM ran not too long back that, having not seen it before, I decided to record so that I could watch it for the next TCM airing. That movie is Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, airing tonight at 8:00 PM on TCM.

Steve Martin stars as Rigby Reardon, a parody of one of those struggling private eyes you'd see in movies of the noir era. He's reading a newspaper story about a famous scientist named John Forrest who, in a scene we see at the beginning of the movie, is run off the road and killed, although at the end of the movie you'll see that this is one of many plot holes in the movie. Walking into Reardon's office is a woman who sees the newspaper and faints.

That woman turns out to be Juliet Forrest, who fainted because of the newspaper headline about her father; meanwhile, Rigby, having come to Juliet's aid, immediately falls head over heels in love with her. Juliet showed up because she wants to know who killed her father and why; she's got good reason to believe that there's something sinister going on. And, of course, she's going to be proved right since we wouldn't have much of a movie here if there weren't anything sinister going on.

Juliet gives Rigby the key to her father's lab, in a run-down part of Los Angeles because Dr. Forrest's hobby was cheesemaking and this is where he could experiment with moldy cheeses and not bother any neighbors. What Rigby finds is two lists, one called "Friends of Carlotta" and the other "Enemies of Carlotta". Rigby is interrupted by a knock at the door from a man saying that he's the exterminator.

That man turns out to be Alan Ladd straight out of This Gun for Hire, and our "exterminator" shoots Rigby in the shoulder. Now, if you didn't know going into the movie, the whole point behind Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid was to serve as both a parody of the noir and detective genres of the 1940s as well as an homage to them. The homage involves taking scenes from various movies of the era and splicing them into the movie in such away that they fit relatively coherently into the plot. That, and photographing Steve Martin in such a way that it looks like he really is interacting with the classic-era stars. (Having him on the phone with some of them, like Barbara Stanwyck from Sorry, Wrong Number or Humphrey Bogart, is quite convenient.)

The plot, such as it is, results in Rigby learning all of the "enemies of Carlotta" were on a cruise ship down to South America called the Immer Essen and these passengers are being bumped off one by one. The reason why is only revealed when Rigby goes down to South America himself.

The plot of Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is understandably a mess, since it's stuff to weave in all those clips from disparately-plotted movies and have the plot remain tight. So the movie is as much if not more about the parody, as well as trying to identify all those old stars and movies. The stars are mostly easy, although I kept thinking one of them would be Ida Lupino. The movies are a bit more difficult especially since a few people have clips taken from multiple movies while some movies also in the original had multiple people who show up Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, although not necessarily in all of the movies excerpted. As an example, I mentioned Barbara Stanwyck above; although Double Indemnity is also used, it's not for her scenes. Thankfully, however, all of the stars and the movies used are shown with clips in the closing credits.

I think whether Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid will work for the viewer depends on how much viewers like those old movies. Naturally, I'm a fan of the old stuff so I really enjoyed Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid. But I could understand viewers who don't know that much about the classics finding the plot not working and these old clips a distraction.