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When he wasn’t doing his famed TV series Columbo or parts in his friend John Cassavetes’ independent art films, Peter Falk made a handful of terrific underrated films such as Arthur Hiller’s 1979 comic gem The In-Laws.

Written by Andrew Bergman, who worked with Mel Brooks on Blazing Saddles, The In-Laws tells the ridiculously outrageous and funny story of a New York City dentist who is about to meet his daughter Barbara’s fiancé’s parents on the eve of her wedding. In his trademark comedic style, Alan Arkin (whom most younger moviegoers may know as the grandpa from Little Miss Sunshine) is a riot as Dr. Sheldon Kornpett, D.D.S., whose normal life gets transformed into a weekend of utter chaos when future in-law Vince Ricardo (Falk) gets him involved in a CIA plot to steal U.S. Treasury currency plates and halt a Central American dictator’s plan to ruin American commerce.

Dangerous and crazy car chases, shoot-outs with CIA agents and encounters with wild Chinese pilots give Kornpett a living nightmare when all he wanted was to provide his daughter with the happiest day of her life. Falk and Arkin are a wonderful comic team. The always funny Richard Libertini stars as the insane General Garcia of the Tijada Republic and a young Ed Begley Jr. is a CIA Intelligence Embassy Officer.

The film launched Bergman’s career as a writer/director; he later went on to direct So Fine, The Freshman and Honeymoon in Vegas and even inspired a feeble In-Laws remake in 2003 with Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks.