Gazebo, The

What would you do if a blackmailer showed up peddling nudie pictures of your sweet wife? Why, plug the scoundrel and bury him under the backyard gazebo, of course! Delightful screen farceurs Glenn Ford and Debbie Reynolds are up to their corpus delicti in laughs as a show-biz power couple with something to hide in director George Marshall's (Destry Rides Again) sly black comedy highlighted by a meticulously plotted, hilariously botched "perfect crime." If The Gazebo reminds you of The Trouble with Harry or Family Plot, there may be a reason: when everything is going wrong, the anxious murderer queries Alfred Hitchcock on the phone for some authoritative what-do-I-do-with-a-dead-body advice. Comedy veterans Carl Reiner, John McGiver and Doro Merande also add to the macabre merriment.

• comedy
• crime