Director: Raymie Muzquiz
Airing Date: January 6, 1996
Stars: Duckman
Rating: ★★★½
Review:

The third season of Duckman opens with an obvious film noir parody filmed in black and white.

It starts with a shot of a drunken Cornfed walking the rainy streets followed by Cornfed’s voice over in a confession to a priest. Cornfed’s voice over alone is full of film noir tropes.

Cornfed’s story involves a Veronica Lake-like “dame” called Tamara La Boinque, who turns the two partners Duckman and Cornfed into rivals. Duckman and Cornfed (in trenchcoats) visit the Casablanca-like nightclub in which she works, where they encounter caricatures of Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet and Humphrey Bogart in their roles in that particular film. When Cornfed unmasks Tamara he throws in references to several other film noir titles.

This episode only features regular stars Duckman and Cornfed. Unfortunately, the comedy relies too heavily on parody, and the episode’s story in itself is hardly interesting. One even gets the feeling the studio could have done more with the film noir theme.

Watch ‘Noir Gang’ yourself and tell me what you think:

This is Duckman episode no. 23
To the previous Duckman episode: Clip Job
To the next Duckman episode: Forbidden Fruit

‘Noir Gang’ is available on the DVD-box ‘Duckman – The Complete Series’