Six Damn Fine Degrees #213: Murder By Clue

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Reading Melanie’s fascinating deep-dive into the Chinese series The Spirealm, with colourful characters caught together in a house full of doors, setting off a game of decisions and variations, I was immediately reminded of one pre-virtual, pre-digital version of a similar scenario: the game Clue, and its 1985 film adaptation.

Clue, the game, was indebted of course to all the great whodunit mysteries, from Arthur Conan Doyle to Agatha Christie. It was first released in 1948 (as Cluedo in German, a combination of ‘clue’ and ‘ludo’, Latin for “I play”). The game’s premise was to find out who had committed murder, among six suspects invited to dinner at a remote mansion, each represented by one player of the game. There were also six murder weapons (a candlestick, a dagger, a rope, a lead pipe, a revolver and a wrench) that had possibly been employed, and altogether nine rooms in the mansion where the murder could take place.

The six suspects consisted of one Miss Scarlett (a femme fatale), Mrs. Peacock (a rich widow), Colonel Mustard (a retired career officer), Reverend Green (a local priest) or alternatively Mr Green (a businessman in the American edition), Professor Plum (a somewhat ditsy academic) and Mrs. White (the housekeeper). The murder victim was variably known as Mr. Black or Mr. Boddy in British or American versions of the game. With these characters and murder weapons at hand, the players were ready to start guessing and suggesting as to who they believed the murderer was.

The game’s popularity only grew over the decades, and by the 1980s, Clue had not only been translated into various languages – with several notable differences among different countries – but also developed into different editions (including Master Detective, Nostalgia and Vintage versions). By then, it had also been played by millions around the world and awarded several Top 100 Best Game spots. It would only be a matter of time before a film adaptation would follow.

Classic whodunits had just received a major boost throughout the 1970s, with several Agatha Christie murder mysteries surrounding master detective Hercule Poirot hitting the big screen: Murder on the Orient Express had an impressive cast (Richard Widmark, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, Vanessa Redgrave, Anthony Perkins, just to name a few), but its Poirot performance by Albert Finney had underwhelmed critics and audiences. Enter Peter Ustinov in altogether three cinematic outings (Death on the Nile, Evil under the Sun, Appointment with Death) from the late ’70s to the late ’80s, and the blueprint for grand sleuthing among enormously illustrious casts was set.

The role model that Clue seems to reference most clearly, however, is in fact a spoof of all of the whodunnits in crime fiction history, so to speak: Murder By Death (1976). Neil Simon clearly had Agatha Christie in mind when he had millionaire Lionel Twain (Truman Capote) invite the most gifted detectives for a planned murder to his mansion: there’s Peter Falk (at the peak of his Inspector Columbo years) as a Sam Diamond (clearly channelling Hammett’s Sam Spade) with his needy assistant (Eileen Brennan), an incredibly non-PC Peter Sellers as Chinese sleuth Sidney Wang with his Japanese adopted son. Milo Perrier (James Coco) is the potentially slightly less talented cousin to Hercule Poirot and only travels with his thickly accented chauffeur (James Cromwell in his first film) and David Niven and Maggie Smith play another Hammett-inspired couple, Dick and Dora Charleston, clearly modelled on Nick and Nora Charles from the Thin Man series. And let’s not forget the Miss Marple pastiche, Jessica Marbles (played by the Bride of Frankenstein herself, Elsa Lanchester), accompanied by her ‘nurse’ Miss Withers (a delightful Estelle Winwood).

At the center of all this, however, are two additional characters, both of whom will play unexpected roles in the course of the mystery: blind butler Jamessir Bensonmum (a name that accounts for one of the most hilarious exchanges in the film), played by Alec Guinness with much Ladykillers gusto, as well as a deaf-mute cook called Yeta (Nancy Walker). They cater to the confused invited guests and show up at the most unexpected twists and turns of the admittedly twisted plot. It’s the dialogues that elevate this satire above all other whodunits and murder mystery spoofs: Neil Simon has devised such deliciously funny exchanges that the film absolutely necessitates repeat viewing.

So how does the film Clue fare against its predecessor? First of all, it seems to have taken various visual clues of the mansion and interiors of Murder By Death to heart. It also puts a conniving and unpredictable butler (Wadsworth, perfectly cast with Tim Curry) against the murder suspects and their victim, Mr Boddy (Lee Ving). The rest of the cast is fabulous as well: Eileen Brennan is the only cast member from the previous film, here playing Mrs. Peacock. Christopher Lloyd is Professor Plum, just off his success in Back to the Future, Lesley Ann Warren, who had just dazzled audiences in Victor/Victoria a couple of years earlier, here plays Miss Scarlet, while Mrs. White is played by an ever-enjoyable Madeline Kahn, who found new fame after her many stints with Mel Brooks. Michael McKean (as Mr. Green), Martin Mull (as Colonel Mustard) and Colleen Camp (as the maid Yvette) complete the cast.

It’s a fun ride and certainly all the more enjoyable for experts of the game (which I am not), with all the characters, rooms and murder weapons coming into play. It’s certainly less sharp in terms of dialogue and less self-referential when it comes to all the murder mystery role models it emulates. Towards the end, my head was spinning with potential murderers, motifs and opportunities, and even though their endings are not dissimilar, it’s clearly Murder By Death with its wonderful attention to characterisation, its cast at the top of their game and the charades it plays with the most gifted detectives of all times that wins the day!