Malcolm (The Manchu Eagle Murder Caper Mystery)

Created by Dean Hargrove
(1938–)

Why does The Manchu Eagle Murder Caper Mystery even exist?

The 1975 film “comedy,” co-written and directed by Dean Hargrove, has no real stars, few real laughs and little plot.

And then the penny dropped. Two of the “stars” of this 1975 gobbler, Gabriel Dell and Huntz Hall, were previously members of the Dead End Kids ensemble that, under various guises (The East Side Kids, The Bowery Boys, etc.), appeared in a long, long string of popular B-films that stretched from the thirties well into the fifties, by which time the Bowery Boys were decidedly Bowery Men.

Hargrove must have been a fan. In the seventies, I’m sure a lotta folks (including my dad) still had fond memories of those bottom-bill B-comedies, but maybe the producers over-estimated the box-office appeal of a franchise that had sputtered out two decades earlier. Whatever. The film came, went and died.

Although that’s not a surprise. It revolves around the none-too-swift, rosy-cheeked but weathered MALCOLM (played by Dell) who calls himself as a “poultry engineer.” Sort of a weird occupation (he’s trying to figure out how to make chicken lay Easter eggs), but wait—there’s more!

Malcolm is also a newbie private eye, thanks to a mail order correspondence course he took recently. So when the local milkman (Dick Gautier) is fatally shot with an arrow—through an almost closed window while in Malcolm’s office airing his suspicions that somebody might be trying to kill him—the rookie sleuth sets out to find the culprit.

It’s a small town, little more than a strip of highway lined with a chicken hatchery, farms and trailer parks, where everybody seems to know everybody else. But to make up for the tiny population, we are offered a scrumptious variety of strange, bizarro yokels. Pill-popping, alcoholism, suicide attempts, adultery, nymphomania, and graphic over-the-top violence all come into play, plus plenty of sexual kinks, including cross-dressing, bestiality and incest.

All played for laughs, of course.

Sure, there are more murders, and the “solution” is almost clever, but in a stupid kinda way. Mostly, though, the film is a string of unconnected, occasionally cringey scenes, edited with a chainsaw and crudely spliced back together, none of which make much narrative sense. Alcohol may have been involved.

The film is allegedly a spoof of John Huston’s 1941 film classic The Maltese Falcon, but those making that claim presumably haven’t seen either film. There’s a thin line between good dumb fun and just plain stupid, and this incoherent mess gleefully ploughs right through the former to take up permanent residence in the latter.

As for the acting, much of the cast is filled out by actors who look vaguely familiar if only because they were perennial guest stars on television dramas back in the 1970’s (often relegated to the closing credits), but they’re not given much to work with here, and simply but awkwardly chew the scenery, possibly anxious to get it all over with. The other Bowery Boy, Huntz Hall, only has a few scenes—as an incompetent deputy. Grandpa Walton (Will Beer) shows up as the town doctor. Jackie Coogan is the sheriff. But none of it makes much of an impression.

So the question remains: Why was this even made?

Even though it looks like a made-for-television movie, it would never have slipped past network censors of the era, and as a theatrical release, it’s not funny enough or entertaining enough to have reeled them into the movie houses. Were they aiming for the opening slot at a rural drive-in double feature? Did someone lose a bet? Was it made as a tax dodge?

Unless you were a rabid, nostalgia-addled Bowery Boys fan who needed to see everything, there was little to recommend in this gobbler back then.

Or even now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dean Hargrove is a veteran writer/producer on a lot of TV crime shows, whose credits over his long career included everything from The Man from U.N.C.L.E and Columbo to Murder 101 and Jake and the Fat Man, and presumably had a lot of clout. He’s not someone, however, whose name was ever really associated with comedy.

UNDER OATH

• “United Artists dumped this mystery spoof into one LA theater as seen in this LA Times ad on March 26, 1975, and didn’t play much anywhere else. It disappeared without a trace and is an acquired taste. Was an HBO staple in the 70s. Went direct to MGM Video on Demand bypassing VHS.”
  — Louis Letizia‎
• “Surprisingly off-beat and witty (considering that it comes from an ex-Dead End Kid and the creator of Matlock) this is also a film of engaging pointlessness and the sort of absurd humor that later characterized Airplaneand The Naked Gun.”
  — Dan Stumpf  (Mystery *File)

FILMS

• THE MANCHU EAGLE MURDER CAPER MYSTERY | Buy the DVD | Watch it now!
  (1975, United Artists)
  80 minutes (but it seems longer)
  Premiere: March 26, 1975
  Written by Dean Hargrove and Gabriel Dell
  Directed by Dean Hargrove
  Produced by Edward K. Dodds
  Music by Dick DeBenedictis
  Starring Gabriel Dell as MALCOLM
  Also starring Huntz Hall, Jackie Coogan, Joyce Van Patten, Barbara Harris, Will Geer, Anjanette Comer, Vincent Gardenia, Sorrell Booke, Dick Gautier, Nita Talbot, Nicholas Colasanto

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• This Turkey for Hire
  The Worst and/or Most Disappointing P.I. Films
• The Bowery Boys (No, really)
  They appeared in at least two films where at least one of the troupe was a private eye of sorts. Both are far funnier and better films than The Manchu Eagle Murder Caper Mystery.

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. The print ad pictured appeared in the Los Angeles Times on March 26, 1975, proof that it played somewhere.