Hyper-reductive plot summary: Don’t blackmail a murderer.
Clue (1985) shares similarities with Rian Johnson’s well-liked Knives Out. It also shares similarities with every Agatha Christie clone and cozy mystery released in the past century. Cluedo (or Clue for us yankees) was a game designed to be like one of Agatha Christie’s mysteries, so it isn’t surprising that a film based on the board game would feel tonally similar to Murder on the Orient Express or any old episode of Poirot or Midsomer Murders.
The similarities with Knives Out are at a meta level too. Both films highlight the absurdity of the premise of a cozy mystery through the use of comedic actors. Banter feels at once menacing and winking. Body language conveys much. And when things unravel, it is more fun to see someone like Tim Curry or Daniel Craig trying to piece it all together than Albert Finney (with all due respect to the inimitable and fantastic Albert Finney). And Clue, as with Knives Out, is aware that the ultimate reveal is not particularly relevant to the viewer’s enjoyment of the film: the three different endings of Clue are a nod both to how the board game functions and an acknowlegment that all of these people are awful and guilty in one way or another. (Knives Out famously puts its reveal early in the film and then scrambles to contextualize it over the next two hours.)
OK, I’m trying to get to the plots of these movies earlier. Here goes. Several people show up to a mansion in the 1950s in New England after receiving telegrams. Each person knows only that they are attending a dinner party, but each person has, in some way, been blackmailed by the host of the dinner party. As the guests wait for the host, Mr. Boddy (Lee Ving), to arrive, they learn that they all have dark secrets, and that they share a nemesis.
The butler, Wadsworth (another great performance by Tim Curry) clearly knows much more than he lets on, and as gifts the guests are given weapons which most people will recognize from the board game (rope, pipe, wrench, gun, knife, etc.). Mr. Boddy shows up, a hilarious dinner party is had (I still chuckle after all this time at how much humor they get out of the act of eating soup), the lights go out, and Mr. Boddy is dead.
A house in which every living soul has motive for the murder. The doors are locked, the phone lines are cut, bodies are piling up, and now Wadsworth must find the killer.
Pretty good plot, right? Now add Madeline Kahn, Christopher Llloyd, Michael McKean, Martin Mull, Leslie Ann Warren, Eileen Brennan, and Colleen Camp as the characters Mrs. White, Professor Plum, Mr. Green, Colonel Mustard, Miss Scarlett, Mrs. Peacock, and Yvette the maid, respectively.
Now add this tremendously fun and bouncy score by longtime Mel Brooks’ collaborator John Morris. And then top it off with director Jonathan Lynn and cinematographer Victor Kemper utilizing every bit of the mansion to comedic effect (think of the stairs to the basement and to the attic, the cuts to the doorbell, etc.). They also use some Hitchcockian flourishes like the camera moving like it is a peeping tom. I also like that the camera’s frame also functions as the focus of attention for the characters: there are several scenes where what we saw in the the frame is what the characters saw, and someone snuck through that same room undetected (or picked up a key, or opened a secret passage, or planted evidence, etc.).
It’s just a really clever movie. Since everyone is a stranger and everyone has dark secrets to hide—and that’s BEFORE someone was murdered—the actors get to be evasive, cocky, angry, scared, self-righteous, and often all in the same scene. Repeated gags like panic at the doorbell and “GET ON WITH IT” keep the tone light even as the stakes get raised. And having not one, not two, not three, but four tightly wound comedians in every scene really amps up the tension.
I think the movie’s biggest misstep is the lack of a classic Agatha Christie-style detective. Wadsworth is clearly written as the sleuth who makes revelations and accusations, but he also doesn’t entire work in this role because he is complicit in the blackmail, and as viewers we are never entirely sure of his identity. This is a minor quibble, as I think part of why the movie works as it does is that no one ever seems in control at any moment, which helps increase that tension. Miss Marple may well have solved the mystery before the first unexpected guest arrived.
I’ve seen this movie more times than I can count. I think that it has something for everyone (good jokes, amusing story, clever camera work, the soundtrack is dope, the performances are fantastic). It is 95 minutes well worth your time, especially if you are someone who enjoys crime fiction. And since procedurals and true crime are like 75% of all podcasts and television, the chances are pretty good.