Clue

Clue (1985)


Runtime: 96 minutes


Directed by: Jonathan Lynn


Starring: The Late Eileen Brennan, Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean, Martin Mull, Lesley Ann Warren


From: Paramount


Here is a movie I've seen a few times when I was younger but it's been too many years since I've watched it in full, even though I've had the DVD for who knows how many months now. I was finally given the motivation when the late Eileen Brennan passed away this past Sunday. I figured that was enough of a kick in the ass for me to view something I enjoyed as a kid and hoped I would also enjoy as an adult in my 30's.


You should know the basic plot of the movie, as I presume that everyone has played it at least once in their lives. Six colorful people are brought to the mansion owned by Mr. Boddy (strangely, Lee Ving, lead singer for the legendary punk rock group Fear; he appeared in a decent amount of movies in the 80's, but that was inspired casting to have him in such a role) as he is blackmailing all of them; he ends up dead and as more people who live in the mansion die they try to figure out who is the killer... and of course theatrically they had one of three endings play at random and on VHS tape you get to see all three endings. I went with the latter; the 2000 DVD release gives you both options, which is pretty great.



I was hoping I would feel the same about this as I did way back when. I figured I would finally “get” some moments that I did not as a kid, and I would even more appreciate the script where they had all those talented actors doing their thing while making it plausible that there are three different explanations as to what happened and all of them somewhat make sense.

Overall, it's still a movie I enjoy. I did not remember it being so loud (in that you often have characters yelling and shouting; I think that was a mid-80's thing, in hindsight) and there being so much physical humor, but it's still a fun time as it's just entertaining to watch. You have a lot of wordplay (the script was written by the director and none other than John Landis), which is usually a positive to me, and it is nice to see the more than capable cast of famous faces do their thing, and as the center of it all Curry is great as usual.

This is also set in the 50's, so you get talk of such things as Communism/Socialism, J. Edgar Hoover and it being a bad thing that you are a homosexual. There are also some songs of the time period that you hear.

This movie did not do so well at the box office; since then it's become a cult classic, and understandably so. They somehow were able to turn a popular board game into a fun movie and include the elements of the game without it being ridiculous... then again it makes more sense to turn this into a film than say, Battleship! I am glad I finally saw this after so many years.

I'll be back Monday night.