Clue
Sometimes the best way to solve a murder is to invite everyone into the same house, give them weapons, and let absolute chaos take over.
Platform: Beyond the Cartridge
Genre: Mystery / Comedy / Murder Mystery
Director: Jonathan Lynn
Starring: Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Eileen Brennan, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean, Martin Mull, Lesley Ann Warren
Release Date: December 13, 1985
Runtime: 94 minutes
Based On: The Clue board game
Mystery Cartridge Rating: OPEN THE FILE — RECOMMENDED
The Case
In honor of Tim Curry, we decided to revisit Clue.
And honestly, there may not be a better way to remember him.
Curry was one of those actors who could walk into a scene and immediately make it feel like his scene. He could be terrifying, flamboyant, ridiculous, sinister, charming, or all of those things simultaneously.
As Wadsworth, the butler in Clue, he gets to be all of them.
And then he gets to spend the last ten minutes of the movie running around a mansion at approximately the speed of sound while explaining an increasingly ridiculous series of murders.
Bradley had never seen Clue before.
But watching it now, knowing that Tim Curry is gone, made the experience feel different.
And we were reminded of something else:
How the hell is this movie only 94 minutes long?
Seriously.
What happened?
Who decided that this movie needed to contain:
Seven guests with secret identities and scandalous pasts
A blackmailing host
Multiple murders
Multiple murder weapons
Secret passages
A maid
A cook
A motorist
A singing telegram
A series of increasingly frantic investigations
Three different endings
And one of the most gloriously unhinged closing performances in movie history
...and then decided that an hour and a half was plenty?
Somehow, it works.
Welcome to Boddy Manor
The premise is wonderfully stupid.
And we mean that as a compliment.
Six strangers are invited to a mysterious dinner party by a man calling himself Mr. Boddy.
They're given aliases based on the familiar Clue suspects:
Colonel Mustard.
Miss Scarlet.
Mrs. White.
Mr. Green.
Mrs. Peacock.
Professor Plum.
And then there's Wadsworth, the butler.
The guests soon discover that they have something in common:
Mr. Boddy is blackmailing every single one of them.
So naturally, someone kills him.
Then someone else gets killed.
Then someone else.
And suddenly the evening has gone from awkward dinner party to full-scale murder investigation.
The setup is ridiculous.
The characters are ridiculous.
The situation is ridiculous.
And the movie understands all three of those things.
That's important.
Clue isn't trying to convince you that this is a realistic murder mystery.
It's taking the basic structure of the board game and asking:
"What if we made this as a completely unhinged screwball mystery?"
How Did They Fit This Into 94 Minutes?
This may be the greatest mystery in the entire movie.
Because Clue moves.
It doesn't stroll.
It doesn't meander.
It doesn't spend twenty minutes establishing the characters before something happens.
It basically throws everyone into the mansion, starts firing off jokes, kills somebody, and then refuses to slow down.
People run from room to room.
Doors open.
Doors close.
Secret passages appear.
Bodies turn up.
Characters accuse one another.
Someone discovers something.
Someone else discovers something else.
And then everybody runs somewhere else.
The movie has the energy of six people who just realized they're going to miss the last bus and are desperately trying to finish a murder mystery first.
Even the dialogue moves at ridiculous speed.
And then you get to the finale.
Oh, boy.
Wadsworth
Tim Curry's performance is the engine keeping this entire machine running.
Wadsworth begins as a fairly traditional mysterious butler.
Polite.
Proper.
Slightly suspicious.
Then the movie progressively removes whatever restraint he started with.
By the final act, Wadsworth is essentially holding the entire movie together through sheer force of personality.
He explains.
He reenacts.
He runs.
He points.
He accuses.
He doubles back.
He changes his mind.
He explains some more.
He runs some more.
And somehow he manages to deliver an enormous amount of dialogue while doing all of this.
It's an extraordinary physical and comedic performance.
And knowing what we know now about how demanding that finale was makes it even more impressive. TCM reports that Curry's frantic pace and lengthy speeches took such a physical toll that he needed medical attention after filming to get his blood pressure under control.
That's dedication.
Or insanity.
Possibly both.
Madeline Kahn Is Also Madeline Kahn
If Tim Curry is the engine, Madeline Kahn is the movie's secret weapon.
Mrs. White is already a fantastic character.
But Kahn takes every opportunity to make her completely absurd.
And then there's that moment.
You know the one.
The movie is full of excellent performances, but Kahn's delivery of Mrs. White's confession has become one of those scenes that exists independently of the movie around it.
The entire cast is fantastic, really.
Eileen Brennan.
Christopher Lloyd.
Michael McKean.
Martin Mull.
Lesley Ann Warren.
Colleen Camp.
They're all playing characters who are essentially heightened versions of the board game's pieces, but nobody feels interchangeable.
Everyone has a personality.
Everyone has secrets.
Everyone has motives.
And everyone seems capable of murdering somebody.
The Over-the-Top Premise
This is where Clue succeeds better than it probably has any right to.
The movie understands that the premise is absurd and refuses to apologize for it.
Nobody asks why all of these people would attend a dinner party at a creepy mansion with a blackmailer.
Nobody asks why there are secret passages everywhere.
Nobody asks why the murder weapons conveniently correspond to a board game.
Nobody asks why these people keep splitting up after discovering that someone is murdering everyone in the house.
Okay, maybe they should ask that last one.
But they don't.
And that's the fun.
The entire movie exists in a heightened reality where murder is simultaneously horrifying and completely ridiculous.
It's a very difficult balance.
Too serious, and the premise falls apart.
Too silly, and you stop caring.
Clue finds the middle.
The Three Endings
Here's one of the most interesting things about Clue.
The movie originally had three different endings.
When it was released theatrically, different theaters showed different endings. Audiences didn't necessarily know which ending they were going to get.
It was a genuinely bizarre experiment.
And while the theatrical gimmick didn't exactly set the box office on fire, the home-video version that most of us know today puts the endings together.
Which is absolutely the right way to watch it.
Because seeing all three is part of the fun.
And it creates one of the movie's most entertaining tricks:
There isn't necessarily one correct answer.
The film is playing with the very concept of a whodunit.
You came to solve the murder.
But Clue is also a movie based on a game in which the murderer, weapon, and room change every time you play.
So why should the movie be any different?
We think the gimmick works much better now than it probably did in 1985.
Because we're no longer expecting the movie to give us a traditional mystery.
We're here for the ride.
The Secret Passage
There is something deeply satisfying about watching characters race through this mansion.
Every room feels like it might contain something important.
Every door could lead somewhere unexpected.
Every character has something they're hiding.
And the secret passages are exactly the sort of ridiculous addition that makes a Clue movie feel like Clue.
The house itself becomes part of the puzzle.
And when people start racing through it during the final act, the movie essentially becomes a live-action version of someone frantically moving their playing piece around the board.
It's wonderful.
Was It a Hit?
Not exactly.
Clue underperformed at the box office, earning less than its reported $15 million budget. It subsequently found a much larger audience through home video and television and eventually became the cult classic we know today.
Which seems appropriate.
Because this is exactly the sort of movie that benefits from being discovered later.
You can watch it once.
Then show it to somebody who hasn't seen it.
Then discover that you've been quoting it for years.
Then watch it again and realize you missed three jokes the first time.
Then watch it again because somebody in the room said:
"Flames. Flames. On the side of my face."
And now you have to.
A Mystery Cartridge Favorite
There's an obvious question here.
Why are we reviewing a 1985 movie on The Mystery Cartridge?
Because Clue is practically part of our DNA.
A board-game murder mystery.
A locked-down group of suspects.
Secret passages.
Hidden motives.
Multiple possible solutions.
A cast of eccentric characters.
And an ending that essentially turns the entire movie into a giant explanation of how the hell we got here.
If that isn't Mystery Cartridge territory, we don't know what is.
And unlike some adaptations of games, Clue doesn't simply borrow the name.
It understands the spirit of the game.
You're supposed to suspect everyone.
You're supposed to pay attention.
You're supposed to keep track of the weapons and rooms.
And you're supposed to enjoy the ridiculousness of it all.
🚨 MANNEQUIN WARNING 🚨
There are no mannequins.
We checked.
There are dead bodies.
There are secret passages.
There is a lot of running.
There are several questionable decisions.
But there are zero mannequins.
The mansion is safe.
Probably.
Final Verdict
Watching Clue in honor of Tim Curry's passing was bittersweet.
But mostly?
It was a reminder of how much fun this man could have on screen.
Curry didn't play Wadsworth like he was above the material.
He didn't wink at the camera and let us know he understood that this was silly.
He went all in.
And that's why it works.
He commits completely to every ridiculous line, every frantic movement, every absurd revelation.
The rest of the cast does the same.
And Jonathan Lynn's direction keeps the whole thing moving at such a ridiculous pace that you barely have time to wonder whether any of it makes sense.
By the time the credits roll, you've watched a murder mystery, a farce, a board-game adaptation, a slapstick comedy, and an extended Tim Curry performance that somehow all fit into 94 minutes.
We genuinely don't know how they did it.
But we're glad they did.
Clue isn't just a good adaptation of a board game.
It's a great comedy.
It's a great ensemble.
It's a wonderfully ridiculous mystery.
And, above all, it's one hell of a showcase for Tim Curry.
So tonight, we're raising a glass to Wadsworth.
To the man who gave us Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Pennywise, Anatoly Cherdenko, Long John Silver, and countless other unforgettable performances.
And to the butler who spent an entire movie trying to explain who killed whom with what and where.
Thank you, Tim.
And yes...
We did it.
🔎 THE MYSTERY CARTRIDGE VERDICT
OPEN THE FILE — RECOMMENDED
Mystery: ★★★★★
Comedy: ★★★★★
Cast: ★★★★★
Pacing: ★★★★★
Rewatchability: ★★★★★
Absurdity: ★★★★★
Tim Curry: ★★★★★★★★★★
Mannequins: 0/10
The Case: Solved (we think).
The Weapon: Whatever was closest.
The Room: Probably the conservatory.
The Butler: Absolutely stole the show.
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