Given the voracity with which Hollywood will seize upon almost any existing intellectual property — video game! card game! product placement! sequel to product placement! spin-off from sequel to product placement! — and make it into a probably disappointing movie, it’s amazing that Clue (1985), based on one of the dullest board games in existence, turned out as well as it did.

You know the setup of course: six strangers are invited to an isolated country house where they are greeted by a butler, Wadsworth (Tim Curry), who tells them their mystery host will be joining them in due course. It swiftly becomes apparent that the six guests have all been given colourful pseudonyms — “Mr. Green” (Michael McKean), “Colonel Mustard” (Martin Mull), “Mrs. Peacock” (Eileen Brennan), “Professor Plum” (Christopher Lloyd), “Miss Scarlet” (Lesley Ann Warren, channelling Susan Sarandon), and “Mrs. White” (Madeleine Kahn) — and that they, a maid Yvette (Colleen Camp) and a cook (Kellye Nakahara) are the only people in the house.

Wadsworth then reveals that all six guests are victims of a blackmailer — who just so happens to be his employer, Mr. Boddy (Lee Ving) and has also been invited…and who makes them the offer of killing Wadsworth, who had been trying to encourage them to reveal their secrets to prosecute Boddy. Each person is given a weapon from the game — a candlestick, a dagger, a lead pipe, a revolver, a rope, and a wrench — and encouraged to kill Wadsworth to keep their secrets hidden. The lights go out, there’s a shot…and Boddy himself is discovered dead on the floor. Whodunnit?

From here, following a slightly protracted setup, the unfolding mayhem is handled magnificently, not only by Lynn’s excellent script — the story was devised by Lynn with John Landis, whose mojo deserted him the second the 1980s ended — but also by the staggeringly game cast. Plenty of high-energy running and screaming, and more than a little excellent wordplay…

WADSWORTH:
He’s working on the secret of the next fusion bomb.

COLONEL MUSTARD:
How did you know that?

WADSWORTH:
Can you keep a secret?

COLONEL MUSTARD:
Yes…

WADSWORTH:
So can I.

…and the joyous inclusion of secret passages as would be found on the board adds to the carnage of another four deaths, as extra characters appear, are swiftly dispatched, and there seems to be simply no way that any sense can be made from the chaos.

Famously, when shown in the cinema, different screens were given prints with different endings, so your understanding of the solution depended on which of the three you saw. This in a way highlights the flaw of the film as pure detection — there’s no key clue in any case, essentially requiring the murderer to confess to tie everything up — but as a piece of entertainment, it’s delightful. Curry is easily the MVP of the last third (“I know because I was there.”), throwing himself and others around with ludic abandon, and the repeated lines (“Communism was just a red herring…”) adding to the fun of seeing the three different conclusions presented one after another, as how now become customary for the film.

As a piece of four-decades-old media, it has its problems — the men are all letches, the women are harridans or harlots — but the essential anarchy of its premise, and the way that the conclusion comes down to a guessing game just as it would most of the time in the game itself, is delightful. Especially clever is Lynn’s blocking as a director, enabling his ensemble to appear present when in fact there’s always the key person(s) absent to allow for any of those endings. Hell, it even occurred to me on this rewatch, about the fifth time I’ve seen it, that with a small tweak another solution could be possible. So if the producers of the rumoured — and thoroughly unneeded — remake want to come at me with a cheque book, I’ll make it worth your while.

Forty years on, Clue remains a zestful, spirited, wildly entertaining time that rewards your patience in the opening 20 minutes with fillip after fillip in the final run that knocks the stymied creativity of most murder mysteries these days into a cocked hat (?). As I say, it’s not detection — it’s ipsedixitism raised to an art form, complete with murders and more exuberant abandon than a roomful of caffeinated puppies — but the joy and wit and intelligence on display really is something to behold. Don’t remake it, just re-release it: new generations deserve to experience this on the big screen, and I’ll watch it a sixth and a seventh time and chortle all the way through as I did on this encounter.

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All stills in this post are taken from Movie-Screencaps.com. Many thanks to them for making available that which I was unable to procure myself.

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There’s also a novelisation of the film, which is lots of fun as well…