The Cheap Detective

“He knows every cheap trick, cheap joke, cheap shot and cheap dame in the book.”

Lou Peckinpaugh (Peter Falk) is a San Francisco private eye in a rumpled coat, and he is the one the police want for his partner's murder. Neil Simon wrote the script and Robert Moore directed, sending Lou from one heavy-breathing suspect to the next, among them Jezebel Dezire (Ann-Margret) and Betty DeBoop (Eileen Brennan). Falk keeps his hat on and his face flat as the women crowd around him, and the whole city seems to have been built for people to lie to him in.