An investigative journalist gets sacked and takes up offices as a private detective. His first case sees three men turning up, one after the other, claiming to be the husband of one woman who turns out to be an imposter anyway and part of a fraud scheme. Most of the husbands end up dead. In fact, even the one 'husband' in on the fraud ends up dead in the most improbable of fight scenes.
The trouble with the film is that it shifts from being a detective story to a Marx Brothers' film to Abbott and Costello. The detective's girlfriend does more serious work than he does. The ex-girlfriend of the boyfriend of the fraudulent 'wife' gets completely forgotten after she is killed. This, in itself, might not matter, except that every other corpse involved in the film ends up in the same morgue - run by an actor doing a comedic impersonation of Humphrey Bogart, and missing - even the decapitated real wife!
Strangely enough, the detective's girlfriend is just handed information with no questions asked, in the hotel and at the police station, with the real police detective happily standing 2 feet behind her, saying nothing and accepting her orders!
The whole film clunks from one gag to another, otherwise and deserves to be forgotten.
The trouble with the film is that it shifts from being a detective story to a Marx Brothers' film to Abbott and Costello. The detective's girlfriend does more serious work than he does. The ex-girlfriend of the boyfriend of the fraudulent 'wife' gets completely forgotten after she is killed. This, in itself, might not matter, except that every other corpse involved in the film ends up in the same morgue - run by an actor doing a comedic impersonation of Humphrey Bogart, and missing - even the decapitated real wife!
Strangely enough, the detective's girlfriend is just handed information with no questions asked, in the hotel and at the police station, with the real police detective happily standing 2 feet behind her, saying nothing and accepting her orders!
The whole film clunks from one gag to another, otherwise and deserves to be forgotten.