Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid Details

The box-office hits came later, but Steve Martin's early collaborations with director and co-writer Carl Reiner, from The Jerk to All of Me, still rank among his best. This ingenious spoof finds Martin as a hard-boiled private eye with a dangerous phobia about cleaning women, who gets involved in a supremely silly story involving a cheese professor and sinister Nazis. However, the story provides the slenderest of excuses for Martin to be spliced into an array of classic movies and swap dumb dialogue with stars such as Bette Davis, Burt Lancaster, Barbara Stanwyck, Ray Milland and the like in some of their most famous roles. The antics eventually run out of steam, but there are some wonderful moments for film buffs, Martin is on inspired form and Rachel Ward is a revelation in a rare comic role. Look out, too, for Reiner himself (incidentally, he's also When Harry Met Sally … director Rob Reiner's dad) in a cameo.

Ingenious but overstretched prank in which the hero apparently (by intercutting) gets involved with famous crime stars of the forties: Bogart, Ladd, Bacall, Stanwyck, etc. The basic script is simply not funny enough to support the superstructure, though t