Clue

Summary:

A butler invites people over for a dinner party. During the party, the guests (Col. Mustard, Mr. Green, Miss Scarlet, Prof. Plum, Mrs. White, and Mrs. Peacock) find out that everyone is being blackmailed. After Mr. Boddy arrives, Wadsworth reveals why the guests are being blackmailed. Coincidentally, the people who were informants end up dying. Wadsworth and the guests try to figure out who is committing the murders. The movie has three alternate endings. All of the guests and Mr. Boddy are going by names based on the board game.

Story:

I thought it was a good movie. I enjoy watching movies with drawing room endings. It was shades of old Agatha Christie movies. I liked how the movie allowed you to solve the murders with the characters. Another thing I liked about the movie was that the killers had motives to get their victims.

Acting:

I thought the cast had good chemistry with each other. These are actors/actresses who you might not see working together too often, but the writers managed to make it work. They worked really well together.

I thought the acting in Clue was pretty good. I thought they all had great comedic timing. Wadsworth (Tim Curry) in particular was pretty funny. He was funny in scenes even if he isn’t trying to be funny. There’s a particular scene that he has with Colonel Mustard that is funny. Colonel Mustard is confused as to whether there was anyone else in the house. They go back and forth because Wadsworth confuses him with his answer. It was really funny to me.

Motives:

Spoiler Alert: This section may cue you in as to who killed whom.

Colonel Mustard was being blackmailed for stealing radio parts for aircraft. A guest that showed up at the house informed on him to Mr. Boddy.

Professor Plum was having affairs with his female clients. There was someone at the house who informed on him too.

Miss Scarlet was a madam. Someone she was bribing showed up at the party.

Mrs. White was being blackmailed for killing her husbands. The person who knows about her is also at the party.

Mrs. Peacock was taking bribes for her Senator husband. Like the others, there was someone at the house who knew about her.

Mr. Green said he was a homosexual and that he would lose his job if that came out.

Implausible deaths:

Clue suffers from implausible deaths like most mysteries do. For instance, there are three deaths that seem almost impossible to have been committed. Spoiler warning: Please skip this part if you don’t want to know who the victims are. There’s no way that the person who killed the cook could have done it. It was stated earlier in the movie that the cook was killed when Mrs. Peacock was screaming because she was drinking was poisoned. During the second and third endings, no one is screaming at the time of the cook’s death. Another reason that her death is implausible was her size. She was a large woman. It took three people to lift her body once she was found. There’s no way one person could have lifted her body up and placed her in the meat locker. Also, Wadsworth said that the killer used a passageway to avoid being seen by the other guests. There was no way for the killer to know about the passageway let alone know where it would lead to.

Mr. Boddy’s death was implausible because the killer didn’t have enough time to get him. The killer wasn’t away from the other guests long enough to have been able to kill him.

Yvette’s death was implausible because her killer was shown in another room just prior to her death. I can’t say anymore about her death without revealing the killer’s identity.

Twists:

This movie had two good twists in it. The twists involve two separate characters, which I won’t spoil. I will tell you this. The guests never see either twist coming. One of the twists was something that the guests should have expected earlier on in the film.

Questions:

Why were Wadsworth and the guests searching the mansion unarmed? What would they have done if the found the person they thought was the killer?

Was this a murder party? Mr. Boddy gave the guests weapons to kill Wadsworth. This ended up leading to multiple murders.

Why were the guests so trusting of Wadsworth when he knew too much about them?

How did the guests know to wear gloves to the house? All the guests had the same type of gloves on, but they didn’t bring them to the house.

Since the guests were already being blackmailed, why did they risk murdering people?

What was the point of having three endings when one was enough? I would have preferred the first or third endings to the second one. The other two endings seemed more plausible than the second ending.

How come no one heard the cook screaming when she was stabbed?