The Private Eyes (1980 film)
| The Private Eyes | |
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DVD cover
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| Directed by | Lang Elliott |
| Produced by | Wanda Dell Lang Elliott |
| Written by |
Tim Conway John Myhers |
| Starring | Tim Conway Don Knotts Trisha Noble Bernard Fox Grace Zabriskie Irwin Keyes Suzy Mandel |
| Music by | Peter Matz |
| Cinematography | Jacques Haitkin |
| Edited by | Patrick M. Crawford Fabien D. Tordjmann |
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Production
company |
The Private Eyes Partners Limited
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| Distributed by | New World Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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91 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $2.3 million |
| Box office | $18,014,000 (US) |
The Private Eyes is an 1980 American comedy mystery film starring Tim Conway and Don Knotts. The pair play bumbling American detectives who (inexplicably) work for Scotland Yard, obvious parodies of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. It was filmed at Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.
It was directed by Lang Elliott and marks the final pairing of Conway and Knotts (not counting their cameos as two California Highway Patrol officers in the 1984 film Cannonball Run II).
The film opens early in the twentieth century, at an English country mansion with the apparent murder of Lord and Lady Morley in their car by a figure in a black cape. Inspector Winship (Knotts) and Dr. Tart (Conway), two American detectives transferred over to Scotland Yard, then travel to the Morley mansion, brandishing a letter from the late Lord Morley asking him to investigate his own murder. They encounter the heiress (Trisha Noble) and a questionable staff. As the two investigate the murder, each of the staff, which includes a samurai, a hunchback, a busty maid, a gypsy, and an insane butler to mention a few, are seemingly killed. However, each of their bodies disappear before the detectives can show them to the heiress. The detectives then wind up in a "torture chamber" (whose purpose is not explained), where Winship is caught in a deadly trap until the caped figure ("The Shadow") leaps out to rescue him.
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Wikipedia