Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

The Private Eyes Blu-ray Movie Review

Mind the Wookalar

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 7, 2014

The Private Eyes was the last of five feature films starring the beloved team of Don Knotts and Tim Conway, whose two successful Apple Dumpling Gang comedies for Disney virtually guaranteed them an audience. Conway and his co-author John Myhers (who had worked with Conway on an earlier Knotts/Conway outing, The Prize Fighter ) threw together the outline of a script in a few days, and New World Pictures, then in its golden age under the famously thrifty Roger Corman, bankrolled the project at just under $3 million, a pittance even in those days. As Conway later confessed, he didn't worry too much about the screenplay, because he knew he could rely on Knotts to make it funny. Released in May 1980, the film became one of the most popular made during Corman's tenure at New World.

The Private Eyes is essentially a kid's picture, even though director Lang Elliott (the founder of TriStar Pictures) deliberately included just enough of a hint of sexuality to get the film a PG rating and ensure that teenagers wouldn't feel embarrassed for attending. The opening credit sequence is an animated short unto itself that has clearly been designed to mimic the openings of the Pink Panther series, with a touch of Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote thrown in, as cartoon versions of the two detectives played by Knotts and Conway are repeatedly blown up, without serious injury, by a mysterious bomber. Even the title is aimed at kids, because they're the one who are least likely to notice that the film is not about "private" detectives. Knotts and Conway play two real cops (allegedly) who work for an official agency referred to as "Scotland Yard" or "the Yard", although it can't be Scotland Yard in London, because both of them are obviously Yanks.

Neither the writers, the director nor the cast ever bothered to decide just exactly where The Private Eyes takes place, other than a magical place called Sketchville. The magnificent manor known as the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina served as the filming location. Following the Corman playbook, director Elliott let the mansion, its grounds and its interiors provide a level of production value that would have cost untold millions to construct on soundstages and backlots. As a result, the film looks much more expensive than it was.

A true cult classic, The Private Eyes was the first Blu-ray issued by specialty publisher Hen's Tooth Video.

In a pre-credit teaser, Lord and Lady Morley (Fred Stuthman and Mary Nell Santacroce) are murdered in their luxurious Rolls Royce just outside Morley Manor by a mysterious hooded figure who will remind contemporary viewers of the killer in the Scream films (minus the ghost mask). After the animated credits, we meet Inspector Winship (Knotts) and Dr. Tart (Conway), who are loosely modeled on Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (Knotts's deerstalker hat is the giveaway). They have been summoned to Morley Manor by a letter from Lord Morley requesting that they solve his murder. The conundrum of how Lord Morley could have written such a letter from the grave is lost on both detectives until someone points it out, which gives you an idea of their detecting skills.

At the manor, the pair encounters a rogues' gallery of suspects, each of them more cartoonish than the last. They include the deceased couple's adopted daughter, Phyllis (Trisha Noble), who inherits all their wealth, unless she too dies, in which case the servants divide the fortune among themselves (motives galore!). The mistress of the house, Nanny (Grace Zabriskie), has the accent of Young Frankenstein's Frau Blücher and the sadistic streak of High Anxiety's Nurse Diesel. The butler, Justin (Bernard Fox), may be a homicidal maniac. The cook, Mr. Uwatsum (John Fujioka), appears to have learned his skills from watching John Belushi's recurring Samurai character from the early years of Saturday Night Live. The gypsy groundskeeper, Tibet (Stan Ross), stepped in from a Thirties Universal horror film. The stable boy, Jock (Irwin Keyes), looks and sounds like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. And the English maid, Hilda (Suzy Mandel), was clearly not employed for her housekeeping skills.

As the above list indicates, Conway's and Myhers' script borrows shamelessly from numerous sources, including the basic setup of the haunted mansion filled with secret passages, hidden doors and mysterious figures who may or may not be supernatural beings. Pretty much all of it becomes a pretext for Knotts and Conway to riff off each other, as Winship and Tart bicker endlessly about what they'll do next. They don't so much detect as stumble over one another. Additional physical comedy is provided by the carrier pigeons that Tart has brought along as a more efficient (huh?) method of communicating with the Yard. Verbal comedy arrives in the notes left by the killer that begin as poems but peter out as prose, because the killer forgets how to rhyme.

As a director of comedy, Elliott is no Mel Brooks, but Knotts and Conway know what works for them. As Conway says in his commentary, kids love this movie. Put yourself in that frame of mind, and it's a silly, fast ninety minutes.

The Private Eyes Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Demonstrating once again the close alliance between horror and humor, The Private Eyes was shot by venerable horror cinematographer Jacques Haitkin, whose work includes the original A Nightmare on Elm Street (and its first sequel), The Hidden and a personal favorite of mine, Galaxy of Terror. The source material for Hen's Tooth's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is in decent but not ideal shape, with noticeable print damage, dust, scratches and one vertical line late in the film that lasts for several seconds. Though somewhat on the grainy side—which means that, at the very least, detail hasn't been stripped away for the sake of grain reduction—the image is sufficiently detailed to showcase the elaborate decor of Morley Manor (most of which were the actual furniture and furnishings of the Biltmore Estate). The absurdly exaggerated costumes and makeup, the cheesy effects and the haunted-house style set decoration for the hidden passages, secret rooms and revolving walls can all be appreciated in this presentation; if anything, they gain a kind of antique charm from the rougher appearance.

Even with the grainy image, the average bitrate of 27.00 Mbps (the actual number from BDInfo) is sufficient to avoid compression issues, because, with the exception of a few scenes, the frame doesn't contain significant motion. The primary challenge for the compressionist was to preserve the grain structure without adding noise or artifacts, and that appears to have been accomplished successfully.

The Private Eyes Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Hen's Tooth did not immediately embrace lossless audio on Blu-ray, although it had come around by its third release, High Road to China, and has been consistent ever since. The original mono soundtrack for The Private Eyes is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, with identical left and right channels. It sounds surprisingly robust. Voices are clear; the exaggeratedly comical sound effects register with the appropriate impact; bass extension is deeper than it has any right to be for a thirty-year-old mono soundtrack; and the musical score by Peter Matz (former musical director on The Carol Burnett Show) heightens the silliness just as it should.

The Private Eyes Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Co-Writer/Actor Tim Conway and Director Lang Elliott: Most of the useful information falls within the first half hour, as Conway describes the origin of the project and introduces the cast as they appear. Elliott chimes in with additional detail. By the latter half of the film, the two commentators are mostly entertaining themselves laughing along with the film and narrating the action, although a few additional facts from the shoot slip out here and there.



• Original Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1.33:1; 2:08): Though formatted as 1080p, this appears to be upconverted from a standard definition source.



• Photo Gallery (1080p): About a dozen stills, mostly behind-the-scenes.

The Private Eyes Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Posters in the Blu-ray.com forum routinely ask, "Why can't we get X on Blu-ray?", where X is an obscure cult classic that wouldn't sell millions of copies and the rights may not even be held by a major studio. Hen's Tooth Video is one of the very few publishers devoted to finding and bringing such titles to Blu-ray. The Private Eyes launched their commitment, and other titles have followed at a slow but steady pace ever since. Supplies are now short, but the title is still available at Amazon. Recommended for anyone who has fond memories of either the film or the pairing of Knotts and Conway, and also for family viewing.