Some movies just aren’t avail­able in any other for­mat. I once had a room­mate who had a large col­lec­tion of movies on laserdisc that were either unavail­able on DVD or were oth­er­wise greatly supe­rior to the DVD ver­sions. Among them was The Cheap Detec­tive, writ­ten by Neil Simon and star­ring Peter Falk, Made­line Kahn, Eileen Bren­nan, Stockard Chan­ning, Sid Ceasar, Dom DeLuise, Abe Vigoda, and a half-​​​​score of oth­ers in a WWII detec­tive spoof. It is one of those come­dies, for which Simon had a pen­chant, that was able to pull off absur­dity with­out devolv­ing into farce. I actu­ally like it bet­ter than its more-​​​​popular pre­de­ces­sor, Mur­der [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...