If you want to get your friends into classic movies, there are three ways to do so. Kidnapping them, strapping them to a chair with eye clamps and locking them in a room with a TV locked onto Turner Classic Movies isn’t quite the best idea, nor is lecturing them about how all modern films are terrible compared to everything pre-code or up to say, 1959.

I’d say method three, where you invite them over and pop on Carl Reiner’s 1982 film Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid works the best because you get a film that’s not too old, funny as hell and one that’s going to get copious notes taken as to which classics were used in certain scenes. Of course, you’ll also have to convince some of those friends who don’t like any black and white movies (or Steve Martin) that this is worth a look, but that shouldn’t be too hard if you’re smart…

The movie is a very hilarious send up of film noir tropes made up of original footage shot in black and white carefully edited with great scenes from 18 classic movies from 1941 to 1950. Along with Martin’s brilliant timing and a completely daffy script (By Reiner, George Gipes and Martin) that mines everything it can for comic relief (which works quite well most of the time) and yes, changes up the entire meanings of the clips it uses from those more serious films. It’s quite a sight to see bits where characters from Notorious, White Heat, The Lost Weekend, Dark Passage and other gems are used as foils or joke fodder for Martin’s unstable P.I. Rigby Reardon as he attempts to find out who murdered a scientist and cheese maker.

Yes, I said cheese maker. I’ll also say “cleaning woman” and let the film take over with that particular gag and its oddball explanation of why Reardon gets murderous when he hears those words. The film throws plenty of curve balls at you between Martin’s mostly deadpan delivery, Rachel Ward sucking bullets from his arm no less that three times when he gets shot in a few scenes, and the way the story flies off into even more offbeat territory as it goes on (somehow, Nazis are involved as well as some really special pungent cheese, so pay attention!). Not every gag is a winner and yes, the movie does run out of ideas as the clips keep coming, but by that point you’ll just have to stick around for the ending just to see where it all ends up.

The film also wins big in terms of going for period Hollywood accuracy thanks to the Edith Head costumes and a great score by Miklós Rózsa, both well-respected Hollywood legends. This was actually both the famed costume designer’s and well as the composer’s final film in their long and successful careers, and this is yet another reason to round up some friends to check this one out. I’m betting that someone will be grabbing their cell phone, laptop or tablet to check out if the different flicks in those clips are on Netflix (hmmmm – that sounds like an old Variety headline), but I say see if they’re on TCM first, as you probably have a much better chance to catch more of them there than online. Of course, I could be wrong, as I don’t use Netflix… but I guess you’ll find out soon enough where the best places to catch the classics are…