DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID (1982) ***1/2 Masterpiece of film editing and and writing around problems. After this how can anyone ever identify a dead-end plot? The very concept is rendered obsolete, extincted, struck down by Steve Martin's mighty quill (which is probably attached to that arrow through his head). If you think about it, it's also a most glorious monument to ego: he battles and confounds no less than Kirk Douglas, James Cagney, Burt Lancaster, Alan Ladd, and Edward Arnold; he orders around his assistant detective Humphrey Bogart; and he is amorously pursued by no less or fewer than Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Veronica Lake, Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner, Barbara Stanwyck, Ava Gardner, and Fred MacMurray. Is all that splicing seamless? It sure feels that way. For all the thousands of hours of research and snipping and freezing and looking for just the right facial gestures Carl Reiner gives the thing the unmistakeable and absolute feel of being made up as it goes along-and nothing could be more out of place than the hysterical pajama bit anyway. And the dead men (and gals) aren't even the best of it. It's the big leagues baby, lala land of lost legends, and frankly Rachel Ward blows the other screen goddesses off the stage. Reni Santoni is so funny as to seriously threaten eclipsing even Steve Martin himself, in his own vehicle, that he wrote, to glorify himself. Long live this single-entry genre, Nuevo Nor Noire.
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