I had this one on my netflix “saved” list for quite some time. A parody of several varieties of detective mystery films, starring Peter Sellers, Alec Guinness, and Peter Falk — how could it go wrong?

The first clue to answering that question was in the opening scene, where Alec Guinness was playing a blind butler. In the opening scene he was stamping some envelopes. Lick, stamp, lick, stamp, lick stamp. Then fade out and HA HA THE BLIND GUY MISSED THE ENVELOPES AND STAMPED THE TABLE. HA HA. This was a sign of bad things to come.

I kept wondering while I was watching it, when was Peter Sellers going to show up? Then it dawned on me that he was the dude playing the “Chinese” detective with taped up eyes spouting ridiculous fortune cookie sayings. Peter Falk’s role was to be homophobic, misogynistic, and racist in a “charming” way. Though I must say in the few places where he wasn’t doing on of those things he did a really good job.

The sad part is that this movie had real potential — and in a few parts it really shined through despite the failings listed above. The conclusion of it was a wonderful parody of the ridiculous twists that are often given to films of this genre to solve a case. This movie could really stand to be remade, especially given how the detective genre has been really prominent lately with all of the crime dramas on tv.