WHO IS KILLING THE GREAT CHEFS OF EUROPE? Lorimar (now Warner Brothers), 1978. Cast: Jacqueline Bisset as Natasha O’Brien, George Segal as Robby Ross, Robert Morley as Maximillian Vandeveer. Screenplay by Peter Stone, based on the novel Someone Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe by Ivan and Nan Lyons. Director: Ted Kotcheff.

   In Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? the world’s finest dessert chef Natasha O’Brien finds herself between a killer out to rid Europe of its greatest chefs and her ex-husband who wants her back.

   Award-winning writer Peter Stone took the funny mystery by Ivan and Nat Lyons and gave it the style of Stone’s earlier romance suspense films such as Charade. Shot on location with some of Europe’s best actors, Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? remains an excellent example of the sophisticated adult romantic comedies that today exists only in our memories and DVDs.

   The film begins with Maximillian Vandeveer, played to perfection by Robert Morley. Max is a food critic, publisher of a famous gourmet magazine and addicted to the best foods, and he is dying for those sins. Max is told he will die soon if he does not lose weight, but he responds he doesn’t want to live without his favorite meals.

   Max has arranged for two famous chefs to cook a dinner for the Queen. One of the chefs is Swiss Louie Kohler, the greatest chef in England, and the other is Natasha. Arriving in London, Natasha is kidnapped. She has no idea who or why anyone would kidnap her, but she is more annoyed by the delay than scared by the danger. The beautiful Jacqueline Bisset is delightful as Natasha, a confident pampered woman still hurting from her ex-husband’s affair and, more importantly, him letting the other woman use her kitchen.

   Natasha’s ex and millionaire fast food king Robby Ross, played a little over the top by George Segal, has kidnapped Natasha to ask her to be the Master Chef for his new fast food omelette chain called H. Dumpty. She turns him down.

   Kohler and Natasha prepare the meal for the Queen. The meal is a great success as is Louie’s attempt to seduce Natasha. In the morning she finds him dead, baked in an oven in the style of his famous baked pigeon dish. The police suspect Natasha until Robby blunders into the role of chief suspect.

   Max sends Natasha to Venice to interview the greatest chef in Italy. There he explains, hands on, why Italian men pinch women, appropriately enough his specialty is lobster. Robby unexpectedly arrives. He is still searching for a famous chef to front H. Dumpty. Again, it is Natasha’s fate to find the murdered chef’s body, drowned in his lobster tank.

   Robby realizes if the great chefs of England and Italy have been murdered, the greatest chef in France may be next. He contacts six of the greatest chefs in France, sets up a meeting, and invites Natasha to come with him. In a scene of blocking genius, when Robby and Natasha arrive the chefs are all sitting so each could not see any of the others. Each chef is convinced that only he could be the greatest chef of France. They all agree that a French chef should have been killed first.

   As the tension and mystery intensifies, so does the romance between Robby and Natasha, much to the displeasure of Max.

   With the death of the French chef, Natasha realizes how the victims were selected and that she is next on the menu. But when Max tells Natasha that the killer has confessed, all relax. Max sends Natasha to do a cooking show called “The Movable Feast”. On the show Natasha will show how to cook the dessert she made for the Queen, a bombe.

   While the mystery would not challenge Ellery Queen, there are clues, suspects, and a killer that satisfies the detective in us. It is not only who the killer is, but who the next victim will be that maintains the story suspense.

   What makes this film so special is its wonderful intelligent adult humor. Metaphors using food abound. The conflict between Robby and Max over Natasha, each loving and needing her in different ways, give a new twist to the romantic triangle. As any good comedy mystery, after the real killer confesses, there is a nice epilogue giving the characters closure. The final scene of Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? will leave you smiling and humming the delightful Henry Mancini’s theme music as the credits roll.

THE WESTLAND CASE. Universal, 1937. Preston Foster (Bill Crane), Frank Jenks (Doc Williams), Carol Hughes, Barbara Pepper, Astrid Allwyn, Clarence Wilson, Theodore von Eltz. Based on the novel Headed For A Hearse, by Jonathan Latimer. Director: Christy Cabanne.

   The Westland Case is part of Universal’s short-lived “Crime Club” series — which would be usurped in the 40’s by the dreary Inner Sanctums, but that’s another story.

   It’s a jaunty little effort, fast-paced and well-played. Preston Foster and Frank Jenks put just the right soupcon of boorishness into their portrayals of a pair of hard-drinking PI’s, Bill Crane and Doc Williams, coming off flip and obnoxious without being crude – no small trick, that.

   They are ably supported by a hand-picked cast of no-names, including third-billed Barbara Pepper, who has about ten minutes of screen time, no relation whatever to the Plot [a locked-room affair] and delivers a devastating Mae West impression.

   She is matched perfectly by Clarence Wilson, a diminutive, squeaky-voiced Adolphe-Menjou-wannabe who seems to know he’s got the best role of his career here and positively shines as a stuffy, lecherous lawyer.

Editorial Comment:   Follow this link for a list of the other films in the Crime Club series, and Walter Albert’s review of one of them, posted on this blog about a year ago.

● REPEAT PERFORMANCE. Eagle-Lion Films, 1947. Louis Hayward, Joan Leslie, Virginia Field, Tom Conway, Richard Basehart, Natalie Schafer, Benay Venuta. Based on the novel by William O’Farrell. Director: Alfred L. Werker.

● WILLIAM O’FARRELL – Repeat Performance. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1942. Pennant P55, paperback, revised edition, May 1954; IPL, paperback, 1987. Films: See above, plus: Turn Back the Clock, TV movie, NBC, 1989, with Connie Sellecca & David Dukes (and Joan Leslie in a small role).

   So we came to the end of 2010 and I watched the old year out with two of my favorite New Year’s movies, Chimes at Midnight and Repeat Performance with Joan Leslie as stage actress Sheila Page, who rings in 1947 by killing husband Barney (Louis Hayward).

   Suitably distraught, she wanders out into the clamoring night, runs into some old friends (including Richard Basehart as a mad poet, poetically named William Williams) who commiserate with her on what a lousy year it’s been, then goes to see her producer (Tom Conway).

   But on her way up to Conway’s apartment, her clothes and hair change, the lights flicker, and suddenly it’s a year earlier, and Joan will get a chance to undo all the mistakes that led to infidelity, insanity and murder.

   Or will she? What follows is a neatly ironic tale of predestined ends, a bit over-the-top at times, but kept mostly teetering right at the edge of melodrama, thanks to adroit direction from Alfred Werker (a director with an odd career, who really should be better known) and low-key playing from all concerned, particularly Louis Hayward, who had a long and mostly undistinguished career, but now and again suggested something kind of interesting. His role here as Joan Leslie’s ill-starred spouse sports a lethal fecklessness that’s fun to watch.

   I also ferreted out the novel this was based on, Repeat Performance by William O’Farrell for comparison, and I’m glad I did, as the story seems to have been considerably re-jiggered for the movie.

   O’Farrell starts off with Barney Page, once a prominent stage actor, now a skid-row drunk, waking up in a flop house to find he has just murdered a one-time girlfriend, in a fit of alcoholic remorse following the suicide of his wife Sheila.

   Page is resigned to his fate, but on his way to turn himself in, he keeps running into old friends (including a gay poet affectionately nick-named William and Mary) who try to help him, and ends up fleeing from the cops, getting shot as he jumps onto a departing subway car and — and suddenly it’s a year ago, Barney is still a successful actor, married to Sheila, and he’s going to get to undo all the mistakes he made last year.

   O’Farrell can write. He can put across a bitchy theatrical milieu and a seedy flophouse with equal aplomb, evoke a desperate chase and a disparate seduction with commensurate suspense, and weave a tale of murder and melodrama (verging on Soap Opera at times, but teetering skillfully on the edge) with prose that keeps the pages turning very nicely.

   He also wraps things up with a fine sense of dramatic irony that had me closing the book with that satisfaction you get from finishing a well-crafted tale.

   This is an annual event, held in November, and having missed the last couple, I managed to get into London last year [2010] for this one. First up was a illustrated talk by Rick Leary who was Computer Graphic Supervisor for the Guy Ritchie film Sherlock Holmes. He talked about how they recreated the banks of the Thames for the shots in the film.

   I was amazed by the amount of time and effort that they spent getting detail correct. The first thing he did was to get Victorian maps of the area from which to work. Panoramic digital photographs were taken from the high walkways on Tower Bridge and then existing Victorian building were found (some in Manchester) that were inserted to replace modem ones.

   As he said, most of the original buildings from that time that hadn’t been naturally replaced, were destroyed in the Blitz. A helicopter shoot was arranged, taking a great deal of time in these security conscious days, to film the Thames itself, but the day (in November) turned out to be so sunny that the footage couldn’t be used.

   In fact, he said, although they tried to use photographs of the Thames for the film, reflections in the surface meant that they couldn’t. He ended by showing excerpts from the film showing the final fight scenes on Tower Bridge, firstly with the green screen background as the actors grappled in the studio, and then with CGI imposed.

   It was an illuminating talk (in more ways than one) and I was very impressed by the amount of care that was spent in making the background detail authentic.

   Secondly came a 1949 thirty-minute television production of “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” with Alan Napier (later to become Alfred to Adam West’s Batman) as Sherlock Holmes. This was part of a series Your Show Time and was a fairly routine rendition which could be described, I suppose, as dated but enjoyable.

   Melville Cooper made a Watson straight from the Nigel Bruce School of Performing Arts. The series was sponsored by Lucky Strike which perhaps explains why host and narrator Arthur Shields should suddenly take a moment to exhale smoke directly at the camera.

   Another amusing moment was when, as Helen Stones started to tell her story, Holmes started to light the biggest curved pipe you could wish to see.

   The third item was “Four Beheadings and a Funeral”, a seven minute excerpt from “Treehouse of Horror XV”, a 2004 episode of The Simpsons. It was a Jack the Ripper style story (Jack the Rip-off?) with Eliza Simpson as the Holmes look-a-like, hindered by the Watsonian Dr Bartley. Other Simpsons regulars, including Marge as a flower girl, cropped up using deliberately exaggerated phoney cockney accents. An amusing sequence that I hadn’t seen before.

   Finally we had “Sting of Death”, a 1955 episode from The Elgin Hour, based on A Taste of Honey by H.F. Heard. The leading character here is Mr Mycroft (supposedly, though not exactly stated, Sherlock Holmes) played by Boris Karloff. He comes to the rescue of Mr Silchester (a self-contained, stuffy man superbly played by Robert Flemyng) when he is attacked by the bees of the local beekeeper Hargrove (Heregrove in the book).

   The book’s weakness (well one of them) is that there seems no rational explanation for Heregrove’s actions (assuming that his actions are scientifically possible, a large assumption) except that he is mad. The film follows the book fairly faithfully (except for the necessary shortening) and somehow the failings appeared less as they are more easily overlooked as the action moves on.

   Karloff was fine as the elderly retired Holmes and Hermione Gingold put in a sterling performance as the deliberately perky housekeeper. Another dated but enjoyable production, which linked with “Speckled Band above when, in his final scene, Karloff proceeded to light the second largest curved pipe of the evening.

   I know, now, having checked after writing the above, that “Speckled Band” and “Sting of Death” are available on a US DVD together with other, some less Sherlockian, material. I’m trying to resist but the temptation is there.

Editorial Comment:  The DVD set is easily found in the US at least, including from Amazon. Some of these films and TV programs are also available as videos on the Internet. A little Googling should turn them up without much difficulty.

THE SMILING GHOST. Warner Brothers, 1941. Wayne Morris, Brenda Marshall, Alexis Smith, Alan Hale, Lee Patrick, David Bruce, Helen Westley, Willie Best. Screenplay by Kenneth Garnet and Stuart Palmer, based on a story by Stuart Palmer. Director: Lewis Seiler.

   I saw this spooky comic mystery on its initial release, when I was still in short pants, and for years the image of the Ghost, glowing eerily in the dark, haunted my dreams. A recent screening by Turner didn’t, perhaps, chill me in the way the original release did, but it’s still an engaging Old House mystery, with the requisite dose of sliding panels and screams in the night.

   When out-of-work Alexander “Lucky” Dowling (Wayne Morris), besieged by debt collectors, is hired to play the role of the fiancé of heiress Elinor Bentley (Alexis Smith) for a month, he accepts the job without realizing previous suitors have been severely injured in a suspicious car crash and poisoned by the bite of a venomous snake.

   Accompanied by his valet Clarence (Willie Best), Lucky moves into the Bentley house (it’s a bit too small to be called a mansion) where very quickly an attempt is made on his life and he realizes the job is a potentially lethal one.

   Lucky is slower on the uptake than Clarence but he quickly buys into the fiction that Elinor truly loves him, a fiction that is eventually dispelled by the more clear-headed perspective of reporter Lil Barstow (Brenda Marshall), but not before his devotion is put to the ultimate test, which could be either marriage to the predatory Elinor or murder at the hands of the Ghost.

   The household is crowded with members of the Bentley clan, headed by matriarch Helen Westley, with Charles Hulton giving an indelible portrait of a professor whose hobby is not only collecting shrunken heads but actually producing them in his laboratory. Alan Hale bumbles around as a general factotum and security detail, and Lee Patrick sizes up the situation with her usual wry humor.

   Willie Best, in these supposedly enlightened times, gives probably the most controversial performance, with the most offensive (and, dare I say it, funniest) moment taking place when he conceals himself in a coal bin in the basement.

   This is probably not quite in the league of Paramount’s Old House classics, The Cat and the Canary and The Ghost Breakers, but it kept breaking me up and occasionally produced a hint of the chills that captivated me at a long-ago Saturday matinee. And noting the name of a noted concoctor of comic mysteries as a co-author of the script, I suspect that he’s responsible for the more delightful comic notes in the screenplay.

JUST OFF BROADWAY. 20th Century Fox, 1942. Lloyd Nolan, Marjorie Weaver, Phil Silvers, Janis Carter, Richard Derr. Screenplay by Arnaud d’Usseau, based on the character created by Brett Halliday and an idea by Jo Eisinger; photography by Lucien Andriot. Director: Herbert J. Leeds. Shown at Cinevent 40, Columbus OH, May 2008.

   This sixth, and penultimate Shayne film starring Nolan as the brash private eye, finds the series showing signs of running out of steam. Nolan is as engaging as ever, but the script, which has Shayne serving as a juror and attempting to prove that the wrong person is being tried while he’s sequestered with the jury, requires some stretch of the imagination to find credible.

   I will give the scriptwriter a point for originality (Shayne wraps up the case from the jury box with nary a peep from the judge or lawyers), but nothing for believability. Jim Goodrich, who watched this film with me, added that Phil Silvers, “as always,” brightens up the proceedings.

TOO MANY WINNERS. Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), 1947. Hugh Beaumont (Michael Shayne), Trudy Marshall (Phyllis Hamilton), Charles Mitchell (Tim Rourke), Ralph Dunn, Claire Carleton, John Hamilton, Ben Welden, Byron Foulger. Based on the novel Tickets for Death, by Brett Halliday (source uncredited). Director: William Beaudine.

   Neither of the usual sources (IMDB, American Film Institute) seem to know this, nor is Brett Halliday’s novel credited on the screen, but this final entry in the private eye Mike Shayne movie series was based on Tickets for Death (Holt, 1941), which I reviewed here on this blog over three years ago.

   This is the last of five films in which Shayne was impersonated by Hugh Beaumont, which were preceded by seven in which Lloyd Nolan had the leading role. Beaumont does a better job than I expected in the part, especially after an opening scene in which Shayne and his secretary Phyllis Hamilton (played by Trudy Marshall) have great fun tootling each other with duck call devices, a means by which the producers of this film indicated that this was going to be a serious work of detective art.

   According to a review on decoypro.com, the two are supposed to be going on a duck-hunting vacation together, but business seems to have a way of constantly interfering, to Phyllis’s great consternation. First, a gentleman stops by the office with $2000 in hand to persuade Shayne to give up the case he’s working on. This comes as a surprise to Shayne, since he’s not working on a case. Then he gets a phone call from a woman who has information he would like to have regarding, you guessed it, the case he’s not working on.

   By this time, of course, there is nothing left but for Shayne to take the case, vacation (and unhappy secretary) or not. And what is the case? He’s hired by a racetrack to find out who’s been printing and cashing in on a flood of counterfeit tickets.

   From this point on, there’s a lot of similarity between the book and the movie, though not completely, and if as I said in the book review, “Shayne runs into a lot of characters that both he and the reader have to keep constant track of,” it goes double for the film.

   A sixty minute movie is simply too short for as much plot as there is in this one. I barely kept up, and that was only because I’d read the book. Audiences back in 1947 must have walked out of this movie in a daze, unless they just sat back and took it all in with their minds in an off position.

   I enjoyed it, however, even though it’s a low-budget operation through and through, and in fact if I were to watch it again, it might even make sense. Great fun.

FLY-BY-NIGHT. Paramount Pictures, 1942. Richard Carlson, Nancy Kelly, Albert Bassermann, Miles Mander, Edward Gargan, Adrian Morris, Martin Kosleck, Walter Kingsford, Cy Kendall, Nestor Paiva, Marion Martin, Oscar O’Shea, Mary Gordon, Clem Bevans. Based on a story co-written by Sidney Sheldon. Director: Robert Siodmak.

   It was a cold and stormy night. The lightning crashes, the thunder rolls, and the rain is coming down in torrents. The gates of the Riverford Sanitarium are locked up tight. Nonetheless one of the inmates, locked up behind steel bars, kills a guard and makes his way over the wall.

   Eluding the guards on his trail, he finds his way into Dr. Burton’s car — temporarily out of gas and marooned — and at gunpoint forces the young physician to aid and abet his getaway. He’s no maniac, he tells the doctor. He works for a famous chemist who’s invented a substance called G-32 that a gang of spies are determined to get their hands on.

   Leaving the hotel room where they’ve holed up at for a short moment, Burton (an equally young and very earnest Richard Carlson) returns to find the man dead, murdered by one of his own scalpels. Do the police believe a word of this? Not for a minute.

   Now on the run himself, Burton commandeers the aid of a young and beautiful brunette (redhead?) staying in a room below, a sketch artist named Pat Lindsey (Nancy Kelly, to those of us who’ve read the credits). And they’re off and running, in one of the most amusing screwball mysteries I’ve had the occasion to watch in a long long while.

   Not laugh-out-loud funny, but amusing in the sense of a smile to yourself when another “I can’t quite believe this” scene comes along. Besides their finding a secure hideaway with a rustic justice of the peace and his family, who have their own ideas as to why they’re on the run, there’s some absolutely top notch stunt work involved, as the pair jump from the lady’s automobile they’re driving, up onto a car carrier filled with new cars, hopping into one of them, then releasing it backwards onto the highway, all while going full speed away from both the police and the gang that’s not far them.

   Whew! This movie was not at all what I expected from the opening scene, which I described in a lot more detail than I will the couples’ further quarreling adventures, which I will leave to you find and discover on your own, and delightfully so, if you do.

   Of the cast, most of them were only names to me. Richard Carlson, of course, and Nancy Kelly (sister of Jack Kelly) who later on won a Tony and was nominated for an Oscar, but the others, while they were all terrific in their parts, they don’t win awards for movies like this one. (But maybe they should.)

THERE’S ALWAYS A WOMAN. Columbia Pictures, 1938. Joan Blondell, Melvyn Douglas, Mary Astor, Frances Drake, Jerome Cowan, Thurston Hall, Walter Kingsford, Lester Matthews. Screenplay: Gladys Lehman, based on the short story “There’s Always a Woman” by Wilson Collison (American Magazine, Jan 1937). Director: Alexander Hall.

   A disappointment. After the success of The Thin Man in 1934, there were any number of attempts by Hollywood to cash in on its success, and There’s Always a Woman was one of them.

   Woman, in fact, was intended to be the first in a long series of adventures of PI Bill Reardon (Melvyn Douglas) and his daffy wife Sally (Joan Blondell), but there was only one followup and no more. (I’ll get back to that later.)

   After quitting his job with the D.A.’s office, Bill Reardon starts up his own private eye agency, but business is so bad and in spite of his wife Sally’s encouragement to stick it out a while longer, he decides to stop beating the dead horse and go back to work for the D.A.

   Of course, no sooner does he go out the door but a client walks in. A wealthy society lady (Mary Astor) has a task for the Reardon Agency: to find out if her husband is having an affair with his former paramour, now engaged to another man.

   Sally, you will not be surprised to learn, accepts the case, and not so incidentally, the three hundred dollar retainer that goes with it. (Three hundred dollars paid for a lot of groceries in 1938.)

   When the husband gets murdered, the game is on, but good. Sally is determined to solve the case on her own, while Bill on his part has all the resources of the D.A. (Thurston Hall) for whom he’s now working.

   While it’s a decent enough murder mystery, many viewers may not even notice. What this movie really is is a screwball comedy all the way, with all the stops let out and the battling Reardons in fierce competition from beginning to end – if not all out war.

   And here’s where we came in, and where I begin to quibble and shuffle my feet a little. To my mind, the Reardons are far too antagonistic and aggressive in their struggle to outdo the other, and when I say aggressive, I mean physically.

   There are one or two times when Bill Reardon appears all but certain to rear back and give Sally a punch, and once, after a yank on Sally’s hair that’s a little too fierce, there is a glare in Joan Blondell’s eye in return that definitely does not speak of love.

   It’s been quite a few years from 1938 to now, and I wonder if bringing up today’s attitudes toward spousal abuse as opposed to almost 75 years ago is a point worth mentioning. But while there are scenes in this movie that are funny – how could there not, with bright and sassy Joan Blondell in one of the two primary roles? – most of the humor seems a little too forced for me to give you the full thumbs-up for it which, given the two leading stars, I entirely expected to.

   There was a second movie in the series, There’s That Woman Again, made in 1939, but while Melvyn Douglas returns, Joan Blondell did not; Virginia Bruce played Sally in the sequel. I’ve located a copy, and a look at the second installment of the series will be in order when it arrives.

THE PANTHER’S CLAW. Producers Releasing Corp. (PRC), 1942. Sidney Blackmer (Police Commissioner Thatcher Colt), Ricki Vallin (Anthony “Tony” Abbot), Byron Foulger, Herbert Rawlinson, Barry Bernard, Gerta Rozan, Joaquin Edwards. Based on a story by Anthony Abbot (Fulton Oursler). Director: William Beaudine.

   Thatcher Colt was a character who appeared in a number of detective novels by Anthony Abbot in the 1930s and early 40s, beginning with About the Murder of Geraldine Foster in 1930. According to IMDB, though, The Panther’s Claw was based on the short story “The Perfect Crime of Mr. Digberry.”

   On the other hand, the American Film Institute says it was based on the story “Shake Hands with Murder.” But since Mr. Digberry is definitely a character in Panther’s Claw, and Shake Hands with Murder is a totally different (non-Thatcher Colt) film made by PRC in 1944, we’ll say IMDB has the advantage here.

   There were two earlier film adaptations of Thatcher Colt novels, both of them with Adolphe Menjou in the starring role: The Night Club Lady (1932) and The Circus Queen Lady (1933).

   I’ve seen neither of these, but I think the solid, mostly no-nonsense acting of Sidney Blackmer fits the role of the definitely hands-on police commissioner better. In fact AFI states that Panther’s Claw was intended to be the first in a series. If so, the plans did not work out, as there never was a follow-up.

   Blackmer was the leading man, with top billing and all that goes with it, but believe it or not, it was Byron Foulger, the unlikeliest of movie stars, who gets the majority of the screen time. He plays Mr. Digberry, a mild, meek, milquetoast of a man (meaning that Foulger was perfect for the part) with a 180 pound wife and five daughters. (They’re out of town, though, throughout the movie. We only get to see Digberry’s reaction whenever he realizes that they’ll be back soon.)

   We see first meet Digberry as he’s being caught by the cops sneaking out of a city cemetery at night. It seems he’s received a note that requested he leave $1000 on a gravestone, signed by “The Panther” along with a paw print in ink at the bottom.

   The cops get a big chuckle out of this, as well as the audience, even though Digberry is not the only one to have received such a message. There is more to the case, though, as the “Panther” portion of which is quickly solved, and as it happens, there are more strings to the bow of the greatly bewildered and befuddled Mr. Digberry than first meets the eye.

   There is a murder to be solved, in other words, that of a female opera singer … and I won’t tell you more, but there is a lot more plot in this 70 minute movie than there is in a many a present-day double-the-running-time extravaganza with lots of action and special effects, none of which are present here. The Panther’s Claw was produced on what is obviously a bare-bones budget.

   While the movie’s still running, it is difficult to follow the business of the wigs and the rival wigmakers, or how important it is, but it all makes sense in the end. At least I think so. Overall this film makes for a very enjoyable viewing experience, in my moderately humble opinion. I also imagine there is more humor to be found in the movie than in the short story, based primarily on Foulger’s performance, but I suppose I could be wrong about that.