Inspector General, The (Troma) (1949) Rating: Starring: Barbara Bates, Alan Hale, Danny Kaye, Elsa Lanchester, Nestor Paiva, Walter Slezak Director: Henry Koster Category: Comedy, Musical, Musical Studio: Troma Team Video Subtitles: Length: 102 mins     But wait till that luscious little lovely finds out your not the Inspector General!! Russian literature seems pretty unlikely source material for a Forties Hollywood musical-comedy. And by the time Nikolai Gogol's play The Government Inspector was reworked into a Danny Kaye vehicle, you'd hardly recognize it. But the result, The Inspector General, (1949) is easily one of Kaye's funniest films. Kaye's a stooge in Walter Slezak's cheesy medicine show, and when he wanders into a Russian village, he's mistaken for the visiting Inspector General. This sets up all sorts of comic set pieces, many of them revolving around Slezak's treachery, corrupt officials and Kaye's mistaken identity. Danny Kaye's unique talent demanded that films be built around him, and he's at his energetic best in The Inspector General. Plenty of his signature songs, by Sylvia Fine (Kaye's wife) and Johnny Mercer, are worked into the frantic proceedings. The picture also benefits from a great supporting cast-Slezak, Alan Hale, Elsa Lanchester, Nestor Paiva and the beautiful Barbara Bates. With this film, director Henry Koster (Harvey) may have found the ideal balance between buffoonery and plot. And that's quite a trick.