Tries Too Hard
Gabriel Dell is the owner of a chicken hatchery who wants to be a private eye. When a local man is killed by an arrow, he is hired by the widow to investigate.
It's a burlesque of hard-boiled mysteries, co-written by Dell and director Dean Hargrove. Dell wanders around, self-narrating, looking for clues, amidst the locals, all of whom are eccentrics: nymphomaniacal widows, pill-popping doctors, fake psychics, capped by a shootout in which he and "Big Daddy" Vincent Gardenia blast each other with shotguns, spurting blood and walking away with a band-aid over their eyebrows. It's a little too broad for the actual jokes, making it seemed far more forced, especially with a cast that includes Will Geer, Barbara Harris, Huntz Hall, Jackie Coogan, and Howard Storm.
Dean Hargrove went back to tv work after this.
It's a burlesque of hard-boiled mysteries, co-written by Dell and director Dean Hargrove. Dell wanders around, self-narrating, looking for clues, amidst the locals, all of whom are eccentrics: nymphomaniacal widows, pill-popping doctors, fake psychics, capped by a shootout in which he and "Big Daddy" Vincent Gardenia blast each other with shotguns, spurting blood and walking away with a band-aid over their eyebrows. It's a little too broad for the actual jokes, making it seemed far more forced, especially with a cast that includes Will Geer, Barbara Harris, Huntz Hall, Jackie Coogan, and Howard Storm.
Dean Hargrove went back to tv work after this.
- boblipton
- Nov 30, 2018