Forty years ago, Neil Simon wrote a pair of parodies in the mystery vein: the 1976 film Murder By Death, which sent up the great movie detectives, and The Cheap Detective in 1978, which took on hard-boiled Bogart characters, like Sam Spade. The two films have a lot in common, including Robert Moore as director, Peter Falk as the Bogie analog, and Madeline Kahn in a wonderful supporting role in each. But the Afoot panel prefers one to the other. Which one? You’ll have to listen to find out.

We have spoiler-free parts of this podcast for each film, so if you just want our overview without any giveaways — hey, they’re parodies, but they’re still mysteries — use the chapter markers in your podcast app or these timestamps:

• 14:03 : We start in on Murder By Death spoilers.


• 38:59 : We blow the unspoiler horn to start talking about The Cheap Detective, spoiler-free.


• 46:22 : Once more, the horn, and we get into the details of The Cheap Detective.

Murder By Death and The Cheap Detective

Glenn Fleishman with David J. Loehr, Erika Ensign, John McCoy and Suzi Steffen

Sponsors

• Incomparable Memberships!: Sign up, help support this show, and get some fun bonus material.