My Favorite Brunette

Likeable parody of the hardboiled world of Hammett and Chandler. Hope goes through his familiar routine as a craven photographer, a specialist in baby portraiture, who takes over from an absent private eye (Alan Ladd in a trench-coated cameo appearance) to help out Lamour's damsel in distress. The wisecracks are a little thin on the ground, but the noir atmosphere is handled with a nice mixture of bizarrerie (Lorre, Chaney) and deadpan (such iconographic figures as Jack LaRue and Anthony Caruso).