A car goes over the side of a winding road and the driver is attended to before his premature death by a series of bystanders. He confides to one that there is a huge wad of money buried in a park under a large ‘W’ – then pops his clogs.
The bystanders (amongst them Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman and Phil Silvers) debate about how to retrieve the money, but the arguments spiral out of control into a madcap extended chase. Meanwhile a Police Detective (Spencer Tracy) is aware of what the money is and decides to use the bystanders as bait to retrieve the money…
One of the funniest comedies of the 1960s and of all time, with some spectacular in-camera stunts and the sort of film that would be prohibitive in cost to make today with the sheer star quality and change in agent negotiations – and a forerunner of films like THE CANNONBALL RUN (1981), IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD moves at a cracking pace.