jimv (06/02/82)
I strongly recommend "Dead Men don't Wear Plaid" to old movie buffs. There seem to be two streams of humor in the movie, one being on the level of Steve Martin shaving the hair off of his tongue, and the other being the meshing of wildly incongruous scenes from older movies into a good satire of B or C rate detective movies. The first style of humor seemed to be aimed at teenage boys, and is typified by the preview for the movie where Steve Martin measures audience reaction with a "buttometer". I found this part was constantly detracting from the rest of the movie. The old movie buff will find almost every scene in the movie is taken from cliches in detective stories and actual scenes from older classics. Some of these latter scenes are actually worked into the footage and are delightfully entertaining. The lead-in pan over a rainy metropolis followed by a car careening off a muddy road sets the atmosphere wonderfully. This started me laughing, and when it culminated in foiling a Nazi plot and revealing that the butler did it, I couldn't stop laughing. I must admit, though, that no other group in the theater seemed to notice the humor in the movie. (They all laughed at the Steve Martin humor. Ugh!) --Jim Valerio (sdcsvax!jimv)