Stop, You're Killing Me Reviews

An inferior remake of A SLIGHT CASE OF MURDER (1938) with color and songs added. The Damon Runyon-Howard Lindsay play gave birth to O'Hanlon's script, but all of the satire of the original became overdone farce in this film. Crawford is an ex-hood who has been put out of the bootlegging business by the repeal of the Volstead Act. He's married to Trevor, who's delighted that he's out of the rackets. They have enough money and can now enjoy themselves without fear of a Tommy gun rat-tat-tatting at their front door. Crawford is going to turn his illegal beer operation into a legitimate business, but he finds that it's not as easy as he'd thought it would be. Crawford and Trevor decide to take a brief vacation in Saratoga, where the horses run. Accompanied by three of Crawford's ex-hoods--Cantor, Vitale, and Leonard (who was expert at interpreting Damon Runyon)--and a little orphan (Lettieri), Crawford and Trevor take up residence in a house and find that trouble is all around them. There are four slain gangland mobsters, a cache of cash belonging to a dead bookmaker, and threats on their lives. All the while, Crawford and Trevor's daughter, Gibson, is falling for Hayes, a young local cop who comes from a very social family headed by his mother, Dumont. Just as in the later movie THE BUSY BODY, the corpses get switched around and the humor becomes grisly. Bob Hilliard and Carl Sigman contribute "You're My Everloving" (Crawford, Trevor, reprised by Hayes, Gibson) and "Stop, You're Killing Me." There are also a few chestnuts like "Baby Face" and "With Someone Like You." Not much else to recommend this low comedy. Hayes later went to Broadway, then spent almost 20 years as a soap-opera star. The Henry Morgan listed in the cast became Harry Morgan of TV's "M*A*S*H."