The Dummy Detective: Here’s Looking at You, Doll

There’s nothing like a noir film. The characters, the mystery, the lighting and score. If you’ve ever watched a true noir, you’ve probably realized it instantly. Now, in the world of parody and satire in a sea of films more inspired by noir rather than representing the genre, we get a unique twist: a hard-boiled detective and his (literally) harder-skinned, wooden assistant. The Dummy Detective is both a love letter and a send-up of noir and murder mysteries, with the end result as up in the air as the puppet our hero holds.

Throwing Voices, Casting Suspicions

Van Trillo (Jonathan Geffner) is a private detective by day, ventriloquist, by…also day. One night after a lackluster performance, he’s approached by Miss Lake (Deborah Twiss), our femme fatale. The coroner said her mother died of a heart attack, but she claims it’s murder. She’s even gotten a death threat herself. At first, he refuses to help her, so she flees to Les Saisons, a bed and breakfast in small-town World’s End, New York.

It’s here that we meet the rest of our eclectic and eccentric cast: the jovial British proprietor Harriet Hubbard, (Sean Young), who compulsively writes her murder-mystery novels under a pseudonym; Her longtime tenant Elliot Black (Ed Altman) is an agoraphobe and former ventriloquist, who performs a nightly radio show for the town, but refuses to use his dummy again after he lost control of it; and Hortense (Kristin Samuelson), an uptight woman with her mild-mannered husband (David Lambert) in tow as well as her live-in physician Dr. Cox (Hari Bhaskar). Their dynamic immediately raises more than a few eyebrows. Eventually, Trillo shows up to take the case…just as Lake’s cat is found dead. Everybody’s a suspect, and as the first human is killed as well, Trillo begins to investigate everyone in the inn before they kill again.

A Middling Mystery

As a premise, The Dummy Detective is an homage to film noir and Agatha Christie mysteries with the ventriloquism as the unique twist. Geffner, the screenwriter, is a professional ventriloquist himself who takes every opportunity to showcase his talents onscreen. Even in the scenes without Sam Suede, Trillo’s puppet assistant, Geffner’s delivery is a convincing tribute to the hard-boiled detectives of the paperpacks so lovingly parodied here. Young, the name draw of the cast, is a standout as the kind, quirky innkeeper who’s almost too gleeful to add new macabre details to her little notebook as the mystery unravels. Altman and Twiss are both admirable as the cantankerous tenant and the femme fatale, respectively, but unfortunately the rest of the cast left something to be desired. There were times when Sam Suede delivered more convincing lines than some of them, and the twists of the plot could be a bit too trite and on-the-nose for the genre in a way that didn’t necessarily vibe with the rest of the story.

From a technical perspective, The Dummy Detective succeeds in its homage to noir and mysteries. Director-producer Rob Margolies leads an adept team to deliver a consistently moody score from Clifford J. Tasner that elevates some cool shots and lighting at the hands of Margolies and cinematographer Juri Beythien.

The Dummy Detective: Promising, but Ultimately a Bit Wooden

Rather than bring noir to a new generation, The Dummy Detective looks back toward the stories it loves, plays to the strengths of its writer and star, and ultimately gives us a film that has something, but it’s not quite it. There are plenty of things to enjoy about the film, but altogether this is a case that might go cold with audiences.

The Dummy Detective is now available on Tubi and VOD.