Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982) on Netflix
PG19821h 28mComedyCrimeMystery
Juliet Forrest suspects the mountain car crash that killed her father was no accident. He was a cheese scientist with a secret recipe, so she hires private eye Rigby Reardon.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.8/1026,068 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes77%
Trailer
Plot summary
Juliet Forrest is convinced that her father did not die by accident in a mountain car crash. He was a prominent cheese scientist working on a secret recipe. She asks the private eye Rigby Reardon to prove that her father was murdered. Reardon finds a slip of paper with a list of people described as the Friends and Enemies of Carlotta, along with a signed photograph of the singer Kitty Collins.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Reiner worked Martin into the old footage with over-the-shoulder shots so that it looked as though the comedian were talking to the vintage actors, a strategy used several times in the film. In one scene, trick photography makes it appear that Martin is in the same shot as Cary Grant in a clip from Suspicion.
- Martin purposely chose not to watch any classic films noir before making Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, saying he did not want to act like Humphrey Bogart and did not want to be influenced.
- Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid was the final film for both costume designer Edith Head and composer Miklós Rózsa, so the parody closed out the screen careers of two Hollywood veterans at once.
- Edith Head died two weeks after finishing her work on the film, and a dedication honoring her appears just before the end credits.
- Production designer John DeCuir, a veteran with 40 years of experience, designed 85 separate sets for the film's ten-week shooting schedule.
- Director of photography Michael Chapman studied the angles and lighting popular among 1940s film noir, conducting six months of research with Technicolor so that his new footage would match the old film clips.
- The title refers to a story Martin's character tells about a woman obsessed with plaid, but that scene was ultimately cut from the film.
