I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now?

Abysmal farce about a man who hires a hit man to kill his wife, but when he wants to call it off he can't because it's been sub-contracted to too many different 'wacky' characters. Similar in style to THE BIG BUS and AIRPLANE, but much more sillier. In fact it gets so silly that it becomes dumb, embarrassing, and even more lame than a kiddie flick. The running gag of a faceless killer (we only see his shoes) repeated attempts at killing the wife are poorly executed and photographed. Making them annoying instead of clever or funny. Out of ninety minutes there are really only three that are even half way amusing. Of the few minor highlights: a cuckoo clock in a psychiatrists office, a mexican waiter in a chinese restaurant, and a out of work actor who agrees to do the killing for $6.95. Funny character actors Darden and Libertini play several different roles.

This movie is most famous for Peter Sellers' original involvement with the production, but due to a heart condition, he bowed out and the producers replaced him with Bob Dishy, a comic actor who made many one-shot appearances on various TV sitcoms. Dishy does give it his best with a middling script provided by Mickey Rose, a frequent Woody Allen collaborator and wrote and directed the original slasher spoof Student Bodies. The supporting cast of Bill Dana, Vito Scotti, Richard Libertini, and a pre-Mr. Miyagi Pat Morita make it watchable, though the movie is not really laugh-out-loud funny.

This is one funny flick. It's about the dead-beat husband of a rich woman who, after finding out she's going to divorce him, takes out a life insurance policy on her and hires a hit man (Bill Dana aka Jose Jimenez) to do the dirty work. When he finds out that the insurance policy is invalid, thanks to the incompetant doctor (Pat Morita) who performed the most discreet physical in medical "hystery"! The husband then tries to stop the hit, only to find that it has been sub-contracted about a dozen times! The round up of the (insane, whacky and unlikely) hit men is so funny that my sides hurt when the film finally ended.

Bob Dishy's father wants back the money Dishy has stolen from the company. Dishy's wealthy wife, Joanna Barnes, wants a divorce. Dishy's response is to take out a million-dollar insurance policy on her, and then hire Bill Dana for $25,000 to kill her. When it turns out that the doctor who examined her is not a doctor, Dana finds Dana to call it off. Dana, however, has hired Jack DeLeon for $20,000 to kill her. When they track him down.... well, you get how this is going.

It's all shtick all the time from insane characters, as I realized when they got down to Richard Libertini. Insane characters can be fun, but the audience needs someone to hold onto, some one to react to the insanity, which you don't get until Libertini and Vito Scotti are riffing off each other in. Italian. That wasn't anywhere near enough to keep my interest, and the writers seem to have agreed, since they didn't bother writing an ending.

The mystery is how it could be so bad. The cast is a great collection of comic character actors of the 1970's. The writer has a top-notch resume filled with wonderful comic scripts, including his collaborations with Woody Allen (the early movies, when Woody Allen movies were funny), and the director isn't incompetent. There are even some good lines in the script. (One attempt on Joanna Barnes' life is introduced by a shot of a shark in a swimming pool, with a sign by the pool reading, "Acme Shark Rentals." Bob Dishy's psychiatrist is confined to a straight-jacket; Dishy asks him why, and the psychiatrist replies, "We can't all be fashion-plates.") But the result is a mess. The actors and the director seem to have responded to what they knew was a failing movie with desperation -- "maybe if we play this broader, louder, quirkier, more over-the-top, we can make it funny." They can't, and they don't.

So what went wrong? The temptation, this having been a product of Hollywood in the 1970's, is to wonder who was on what drugs. If that isn't the explanation, I'd love to hear what was.