Dusty Fletcher plays a comic, tap dancer and bad magician. While practicing his routine for that evening's variety show, he accidentally vanishes Lola, the girlfriend of the show's manager, Baltimore Dumdone. She was wearing a thousand-dollar string of pearls and it seems most likely that criminality is afoot.
Dusty's slapstick antics take up a large portion of the film's first act, with some Keystone Cops-type schtick thrown in when four police officers begin chasing Dusty in and out of his disappearance cabinet.
The variety show features Ray Abrams and Gator Green playing the two-tenor sax number "Gator Serenade," written by Green, supported by the rest of the Andy Kirk and His Orchestra. Beverly White sings the racy jazz tune "I Don't Want to Get Married." Her second song, "Ain't Nobody's Business What I Do," is likewise racy, about the joy of carousing and cheating: "If I feel like going out and having some fun/ With some young cat who looks like he might be my son/ That ain't nobody's business what I do." The act of Warren Patterson and Al Jackson sing Jule Styne and Sammy Kahn's "I Believe," Warren leading off and Al doing his part as a Louis Armstrong impersonation. Then Al sings the Fats Waller classic "Ain't Misbehavin'" as Warren tapdances. He is still dancing when Al adds "Wonderful One" to his medley. Lastly, they impersonate the Ink Spots, though there are only two of them to recreate "If I Didn't Care," Warren duplicating the tenor lead until he intentionally becomes comical, while Al does the spoken bridge with new silly words.
Jackie "Moms" Mabley sings the comic song "Don't Sit on My Bed."
The King Cole Trio is up next. Nat at the piano sings "Oo, Kickerooni." The trio follows up with the Don Wolf and Alan Brandt composition "Now He Tells Me," another humorous bit of cool jazz, before closing with "Breezy and the Bass" written by Nat and Johnny "Breezy" Miller.
The Four Congaroos do the Lindy Hop while Andy Kirk's orchestra plays "Basie's Boogie." Kirk's Orchestra performs two more songs, featuring guitar, bass guitar, and saxophone solos. The "Varietettes Dancing Girls" (from Katherine Durham's School of Dancing) close the show with "Apollo Groove," with Andy Kirk and His Orchestra backing them.
Soundtrack
The King Cole Trio featuring Johnny Miller - "Breezy and the Bass" (music by Nat King Cole and Johnny Miller)
It suffers from all of the vices that were prevalent in the race films: painfully low budgets, inadequate direction, uneven performances and wobbly writing. But that is just for the narrative section of the movie. The rest of "Killer Diller" is blessed with an extraordinary cast of talented performers who went far above and beyond the limitations of their material.[1]
Author and journalist Mel Watkins noted "that Moms Mabley was so obviously disengaged in Killer Diller, since her usual routines were much too indelicate to be filmed."[7]
