The Cheap Detective

Parodies seem like the easiest kind of films to make, because they require the least creative effort. Yet, they are rarely made right. In 1976, famous playwright Neil Simon seemed to make it right with his script for *Murder by Death*, a comedy that spoofed Agatha Christie’s mysteries and featured a character of a Bogart-like hard-boiled detective played by Peter Falk. Two years later, Simon tried to repeat this suc…