SPOILER ALERT! There appears to be irony in the title since THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN offers no laughs. The efficient director Stuart Rosenberg makes an efficient crime thriller (about a psychopath on the loose in San Francisco and the cops who track him) but unfortunately, it's little more than that. It's cold, sometimes slow and completely devoid of laughs, despite the presence of Walter Matthau, who managed to add at least some (black) comedy to even the bleakest films (FAIL SAFE, CHARLIE VARRICK). Nevertheless, Matthau is still fine and Bruce Dern is excellent as his unexpected partner. There's also a really fine performance buried in the film by Cathy Lee Crosby (as the distraught wife of Matthau's first partner). Lou Gossett Jr. is a less than patient fellow cop and Anthony Zerbe is Matthau's crusty yet benign superior. A massacre on board a public bus is a real highlight. It's quite frightening.

Police procedurals have always been a staple of fiction, film and TV in the US and Europe. There are many stand outs in the genre and this isn't one of them. Having said that, I will say that this movie is full of surprises and interesting directing and cinematography. The technical assistance provided by the San Francisco police department seems to have been tremendous, particularly in the scenes demonstrating evidence collection and the then-unfamiliar SWAT team. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if some of the stunts and extra work were performed by serving officers. The original novel took place in Sweden and only two items in the film reference that origin, one submachine gun and one Volvo. The title refers to an antique novelty record that has a bit part in the novel but doesn't appear anywhere in the movie, unless it was included in the Muzak that Matthau's detective seems addicted to throughout the movie. Predating Kojak by a few months, Matthau's character is chewing gum and sucking on suckers throughout the movie in an attempt to keep from smoking. He almost gives in at one point, but tosses the pack back on the table in the den. This movie is significant in that it features sex throughout. Prostitutes, live nude performers, gay go-go boys, rough trade and cross-dressers and a token lesbian in knee-length clown socks and sandals who works as a nurse and lost her partner to the crime, just as Matthau's partner died. His dead partner also used his girlfriend to enact murderous bondage scenes which he photographed as part of his crime fetish. Matthau's character apparently has a sexless marriage while his daughter is wandering around braless in thin sweaters and his son is hanging around with the sticky raincoat crowd in a nudie "burlesque" theater. One of the victims in the film is found dead in her apartment sans clothing and Dern's character trips and almost does a push up off her body, her face just inches from his. Matthau's character wanders through it all, chewing gum and viewing it all almost impassively, with only a few moments of verbal indignation and frustration. The scenery is magnificent and cars alone are worth the price of admission. The fashions are irritating, as they were at the time and it is simply amazing how few people use seat belts. The plot is thin, and the denouement is silly, but in the end you could do worse for a couple of hours.

This is a somewhat interesting film about two policemen, Walter Mathau and Bruce Dern, trying to solve a mass murder where one of the victims was Mathau's partner.The story starts out pretty good. A cop tails a man onto a bus in San Francisco one night. Along the route, another man boards the bus and moves all the way to the back. A few minutes later, he stands up and starts spraying the bus with a machine gun. He kills everyone and then walks away after the bus crashes into some bushes. Mathau arrives at the scene and discovers his partner was the cop who was tailing somebody.The evidence takes the police on a scenic journey through San Francisco's underbelly - drugs, prostitution, drag queens, sex parlors, the whole works. It was probably risqué at the time, but it's a bit tame by contemporary standards.There's a problem with the editing of this film. Some scenes are included for shock value, while scenes that could have moved the story along are omitted. At times it's hard to follow what's going on with the film jumping around a lot.The dialog is pretty dated too - Lou Gossett's especially. But Walter Mathau's performance as a rumpled detective working the case while his home life falls apart makes this film worthwhile. Bruce Dern's character is so irritable that it's hard to like him, but I suppose that's what the director wanted. Anthony Zerbe is the best of a mediocre supporting cast.The film is good entertainment and worth watching for Mathau and the San Francisco scenery alone. And you'll get a few laughs at all the long hair and period attire.

Of the books in the Martin Beck series, this and Roseanna are the best at describing a lengthy police investigation, one in which it seems as if no progress is being made. As I recall, the killer was an important businessman trying to cover up the long ago, extremely brutal murder of a young woman. The cop who was killed on the bus had taken up the case in what today we call 'a cold case file.' This version repeats a bit of this,but from there it veers off into San Francisco, homosexuals, a laughing Bruce Dern ~~in the book, 'The Laughing Policeman' is the title of an ancient phonograph record~~, and the bonding between two detectives, a theme worn to death in later movies.Matthau is properly rumpled, grumpy and unsmiling, but he is not Beck, who is one of the finest characters created in modern detective fiction. As one reviewer notes, the film is a pale "Bullitt' and it is McQueen who could have given us the definitive Beck.The solving of the case in the book was large part teamwork, which we don't see here, and a small part luck. The case hinged on the misidentification of a car....this would be too dull unless it were done on Law and Order....and the work it took to track down the owner years later.The film is gritty and makes us work to connect the dots, but it does not hold a candle to the book. Oddly James Ellroy used the same massacre idea in LA Confidential and when time came to make the film version, Curtis Hanson got it right.