The Mouse That Roared (1959)

This is one of those eye-catching titles that I'd seen many times before bothering to find out what they meant. The combination of Peter Sellers and a middling IMDb rating didn't seem promising for my laughs, but at least it was sure to be lighthearted.

A fictitious, tiny, backward European nation, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, has put all its eggs in one basket by selling pinot to the U.S. When sales drop calamitously and no one takes protest letters seriously, the prime minister (Sellers) advises the duchess (Sellers in drag) to "go to war" and "lose," because the U.S. is uniquely generous to former enemies. They send 20 "troops" led by game warden Tully (Sellers still) to New York City with instructions to surrender at the first opportunity. But they arrive at an unusual scenario: Most New Yorkers are underground for an air raid drill, and the few who aren't include General Snippet (MacDonald Parke), eccentric physicist Dr. Kokintz (David Kossoff), his beautiful daughter Helen (Jean Seberg)...and Dr. Kokintz's way-too-insecure prototype of the world's most powerful bomb. Tully decides to pursue victory after all, to the dismay of superiors....

Murder by Death (1976)

I swear I didn't mean to rent two Peter Falk flicks in a row. Ironically, the point was to see something rather unlike the first. Certainly the genre is different, and Falk is no worse suited to comedy. I still knew this to be a gamble, partly because Neil Simon wrote it.

Eccentric millionaire Lionel Twain (Truman Capote, the only time he acted without narrating or playing himself) summons ten humans and a terrier, all famous detectives or their companions, to his secluded mansion for "dinner and a murder." There is no dead body when they arrive, but the atmosphere is deliberately creepy, and they narrowly evade several traps. The blind butler (Alec Guinness) notes his employer's macabre sense of humor but appears unaware of any actual danger. At dinner, Twain announces that someone will be murdered in an hour and that the victim and culprit are both at the table; whoever correctly solves the mystery gets a million bucks. He leaves the room, and the guests are reluctant to split up....