Saturday, July 09, 2005

Death By Laughing

Last night I watched one of my favorite comedies ever, so I thought I'd talk about it. Murder By Death. Buy it. Watch it. Love it. Live it. I laugh my socks of watching this movie. It was written by Neil Simon and it features an all-star cast of some of my favorites: Peter Sellers, Alec Guinness, Eileen Brennan, Peter Falk, David Niven, and Estelle Winwood (Estelle--she's swell!). This is one of the few good moves to come out of the seventies (1976), and this movie will keep me laughing until I die. I suppose a reasonable knowledge of old detective novels and films is necessary to get some of the humor. So come on, people, go rent some film noir from the old days, and then watch this movie. Each of the five detectives is a take on some famed fictional detective. Milo Perrier (James Coco)=Hercule Pirot, Sam Diamond (Peter Falk)=Sam Spade, Jessica Marbles (Elsa Lanchester)=Miss Marple, Dick Charleston (David Niven)=The Thin Man, Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers)=Charlie Chan. Great, okay, we have that settled, now add in some of the greatest quotes of all time. You know how Napolean Dynamite seems great for quotes? It's nothing compared to this movie. Goodness gracious me. Let me think of a few examples:

Sam Diamond: The last time that I trusted a dame was in Paris in 1940. She said she was going out to get a bottle of wine. Two hours later, the Germans marched into France.

Tess Skeffington: There's nothing on him 'til '46, when he was picked up in El Paso, Texas, for trying to smuggle a truckload of rich white Americans across the border into Mexico to pick melons.

Sam Diamond: Now, if one of you gentlemen would be so kind as to give my lady friend here a glass of cheap white wine, I'm going down the hall to find the can. I talk so much sometimes, I forget to go.

Sam Diamond: Look all over him.
Dick Charleston: All over his body?
Sam Diamond: Well, somebody's gotta do it. I'm busy standing guard.
Dick Charleston: Why don't I stand guard? You look all over the body.
Sam Diamond: All right, we'll take turns. You look over the first dead, naked body that we find and I'll look over the second.

Willie Wang: Why do I do all the dirty work, Pop?
Sidney Wang: 'Cause your mother not here to do it.

Sidney Wang: Someone just put deadly snake in room. Wake me when it come near bed.

Well, that's enough for now. Just thought that I'd say that I LOVE THIS MOVIE!!! Murder By Death. Buy it today, folks.

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