eight people be kill on a san francisco bus by a greasegun tot maniac and and one of the victim happen to be a cop who be suppose to be somewhere else . the combination of mass murder and lose one of their own send the sfpd scramble for quick answer and so they send out bruce dern and the dead policeman former partner ( walter matthau ) to piece it all together . ok and that cover the first 10 15 minute of film and and it the only part of this 2 hour fiasco that make any bit of sense . from this point on and the film turn into a jumbled and boring mess and fill with endless red herring involve deviant sex and pimp and hooker and drug addict and weirdo in general . no matter how closely you follow thing and everything appear to lead nowhere and somehow the two detective pull clue ( and not very good one at that ) seemingly out of the air . this cyclical nonsense keep roll almost to the end and when finally and the policeman kinda or sorta or maybe think they have their man . in follow the tone of all that come before and the suspect conveniently make a quick succession of unbelievably stupid move to bring this impossible to follow disaster to a shoehorn in conclusion . a if all that not bad enough and we get to see what would normally be a solid cast look pretty weak . matthau seem a utterly bore a the rest of u and dern usual maniacal glee get twist into goofiness and and everybody else end up stuck be colorless backdrop . i normally enjoy just about any gritty 70 police flick and but the laughing policeman doesn not even come close to make the grade . please don not waste your time .