Clue

Clue (Jonathan Lynn, 1985) It was director John Landis who came up with the idea to make a movie of the famous murder mystery board game. "Clue" was a staple of those stacks of board games in homes (at least it was in my home when I was growing up) and it guaranteed a good hour or so of fun, even if you did lose a murder weapon or two in the set-up and take-down. 

And those murder weapons—a candlestick, a dagger, a lead pipe, a revolver, a rope (with noose!), and a wrench—were all nefariously blunt ways to dispose of people, whether in the library, the billiard room, the conservatory, the ballroom, the kitchen, the dining room, the lounge, the hall, or the study (not to mention the cellar!). What sort of sick mind would come up with this thing?

Well, apologies to Agatha Christie, but the man who came up with it was a Birmingham, Englander named Anthony E. Pratt (he died—I'm not sure by what means—in 1994), who put out a patent for a murder mystery game called "Murder!" He sold the idea to British game manufacturer Waddington's House of Games in the UK, who released the thing in 1949 under the name "Cluedo." Originally, there were other weapons including a bomb, a syringe, a shillelagh, a fireplace poker, and an axe and poison. In the U.S., Parker Brothers released the game under the name "Clue," where, on both sides of "the pond" it enjoyed decades of success, even inspiring a young boy by the name of John Landis.

Where were we?

 

It is 1954 and six Washington D.C. residents are invited to a New England mansion, Hill House, where they are escorted to dinner by Wadsworth the butler (Tim Curry) and the maid Yvette (Colleen Camp). But, why these six individuals and why are they given pseudonyms, rather than being referred to by their real names?

 

A seventh guest, Mr. Boddy (Lee Ving) arrives and it is revealed that he has been blackmailing all of them.

"Mrs. Peacock" (Eileen Brennan) is the wife of a prominent U.S. Senator who has been taking bribes. "Mrs. White" (Madeline Kahn) may have murdered her nuclear physicist husband. "Professor Plum" (Christopher Lloyd) has had an affair with a patient and lost his medical license. "Mr. Green" (Michael McKean) is gay, but must keep it secret lest he be fired from his State Department job. "Colonel Mustard" (Martin Mull) is a war profiteer selling military parts on the black market. Miss Scarlett (Lesley Ann Warren) runs a D.C. brothel. None of this looks good on a resume, which is why when they're informed by Wadsworth that they only 45 minutes before a contingent of police arrive, so they have been pulled together to turn him over to the police for his blackmailing schemes.

Well, to make a long story short,* Boddy reminds them, though, that if he arrested, he will gladly reveal all their secrets to the police, and suggests an alternative: he gives them each a weapon and suggests that as Wadsworth has the only key that will allow them to escape, one of them should kill the butler when Boddy turns out the lights. Boddy turns out the lights. When they're turned back on, it is Boddy himself who has had his lights turned out.

Oh, bother. Whodunnit?

 

Really, who cares? The strength of Clue—as opposed to Murder By Death

—is that, for a comedy, it has a fairly good laugh-to-stinker ratio. And Lynn has insisted that it proceed at a slightly faster pace than a Marx Brothers movie. Yes, it will pause for an audience laugh, but for the shortest amount of time possible, before setting up its next joke. Not only that, but it throws in a considerable amount of slapstick.

Slapstick that looks really painful.

Really painful. But, then what do you expect when you have six or seven live characters within a house with secret passages and a lot of marble flooring? There has been some careful study of early comedy films for this one and so the pace rarely flags, even, at times, it does exhaust. But, there is a measured quantity of vocal humor before something physical happens, which relieves some of that pace.

Plus, the cast is perfectly capable of tossing in a look, a reaction, a bit of business, or—in the cases of Kahn and Curry—line readings that are so exquisite that you want to hear them again...immediately. There is the little conceit of there being three endings—a fourth was scrapped—and that's a bit lame, especially as they all tend to have a momentum-crushing finality with no pay-off when you expect there should be.

The movie bombed at the box-office, but it has achieved an inexplicably ardent cult following (with some pathetic soul trying to gain hits for their podcast with the hyperbole that it's the best movie ever made). It's entertaining and even occasionally inspired, but as for it's breaking any new ground in comedy, no.

 

Talk about not having a "Clue!"

* Too late.