I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now?

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.

Oliver is a man in desperate need of money so he decides to have his rich wife killed off. To this end, he hires a man to assassinate her only to later have a change of heart. It turns out, though, that the murder has been sub-contracted downwards via a chain of men, with the price getting cheaper and cheaper. Oliver, therefore, amasses an ever increasing gang of oddballs and eccentrics in his mission to stop the murder he instigated.

This silly screwball comedy stars a man with an impressively silly name, the (surely) one and only Bob Dishy. This is possibly the actual funniest aspect connected to this film though, as despite being a relentless farce, it isn't especially amusing. Its plot ensures that it is quite episodic in nature and this means that it's fairly fast paced which certainly helps a bit. While it isn't exactly a successful comedy, it is strange enough to be worth a viewing. It's sort of like a poor man's Mel Brooks, even if some of Mel Brooks' actual films sometimes seem like poor man's Mel Brooks films themselves. But the sheer daftness on display here is sort of endearing to a certain extent and, on the whole, I sort of didn't mind it all that much.

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 movie needs to be on the #100 worst movie list.

I watched it at the ages 12-13, and not even then could I like it.

Low budget, low quality acting job. Stay as far away as possible from this one!