Clue (1985)

Written by CinemaSerf on Juni 9, 2023

Tim Curry and Eileen Brennan are great in this dramatised game of "Cleudo". The former is butler "Wadsworth" who is to welcome a select gathering of guests to his employer's stately pile for a dinner with a difference. Once assembled, we discover that these ostensibly upstanding folks are all really miscreants and that they were all being blackmailed! Unbeknown to them, their nemesis is in their midst - but not for long, and what now ensues is a cleverly written and staged murder mystery that pits each of them against the other in an entertaining and funny ninety minutes complete with a rope and some lead piping. There are loads of quips in the pithily delivered script - some more subtle than others, and as the deductive element of the plot heats up, the characters - especially Brennan's "Mrs. Peacock" and Christopher Lloyd's eccentric, slightly sleazy, "Prof Plum" - each start to exude their own sense of chaotic, slapstick, mini-menace. By the end I wasn't quite sure who was dead, if anyone was dead, should anyone have been dead, should they all have been dead, should I have been dead? It races along just like it does on the stage, and as screen adaptations from that medium go - well, it's amongst the best. Looks great too and is really worth sitting in from of the telly with some Malbec with, and enjoying Tim Curry doing what he does best.