(On TV, January 2000) I can testify that Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid works pretty well as a comedy without catching any of its references to the noir genre it’s so obviously parodying. This fabulous cinematic experiment intercuts actual scenes from classic 1930-1950 films into its own B/W footage, and so includes Steve Martin and the gorgeous Rachel Ward interacting with the great Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Vincent Price, Cary Grant, Greta Garbo… and a few others. It presumably blows the mind of the fans of these type of films, but as a total neophyte to this period, I though the film was pretty darn successful without knowing the references. You’ve got to love the recurring tie gag.
(On DVD, November 2021) How interesting it is to revisit Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid after watching a few hundred noir films – the basic comedy of the film is still the same, but now I can recognize the actors, and sometimes even the clips used by Carl Reiner and Steve Martin in putting together their homage. The distinction of the film is not only having Martin play a private investigator in 1940s Los Angeles, but especially having him interact (through clips from older movies) with Classic Hollywood actors. While the film features a heroic re-creation effort in set design, cinematography and costuming (sometimes from people who had worked on the original films, such as Edith Head!), the difference between the original and new footage is quite obvious on DVD: Since Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid was shot in 1980s widescreen and the original footage is in 4:3 “Academy ratio,” the older footage is zoomed into widescreen format and the grain difference is perceptible. Still, that doesn’t do much to lessen the fun of Martin arguing over the phone with Barbara Stanwyck, telling Humphrey Bogart what tie to wear, sharing a train cabin with Cary Grant or getting hit on by Joan Crawford. While the film’s first two acts can often feel disconnected as the protagonist goes investigating and lands in separate films, the last act is more cohesive given how it borrows much of the sequences from The Bribe. While the comedy has its ups and downs, it’s all good fun – and having the beautiful Rachel Ward as the original-footage femme fatale doesn’t hurt either. Martin sports dark hair and is a good sport about the silliness asked of him – Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is clearly part of his early-1980s heyday as a film comedian, and still a funny film today… although it’s a different kind of funny for film noir fans.
