A Slight Case of Murder

'He Hitchcocks me, I'll Spielberg him,' confides Macy, Oliver Hardy-ing us with a sidelong look to camera. He plays a film critic (speciality: '40s noir) who accidentally kills a girlfriend and tries to cover it up. The cop on the case turns out to be an aspiring scriptwriter, with a wife bent on Lana Turner-ing every male on the scene. A blackmailing private eye (Cromwell) shows no sign of going to the movies much. It's moderately amusing, but while Macy and Schachter never stoop to gags, they gleefully Wes Craven us with this illustration/exploitation of the truism that 'everyone's a film buff now'. The most significant cross-reference is implicit, with Macy reprising his Fargo persona, brooding with schoolboy resentment as his misdeeds catch up with him. Made for cable TV, from Donald E Westlake's novel A Travesty.