The movie was part of, if not arrived shortly after, the end of a cycle of a number of 1970s spoofs of film noir and hard-boiled detective films of the 1940s from the likes of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, some of which starred Humphrey Bogart, who was the main target of the parodies. The films included Murder by Death (1976) and The Cheap Detective (1978), both from Neil Simon, Peeper (1976), The Long Goodbye (1973), Woody Allen's Play It Again, Sam (1972), and The Man with Bogart's Face (1980).