Clue opens with six guests arriving at a mansion to face their host, Mr. Boddy. He dies shortly after dinner, and the butler, Wadsworth, tells them the police are coming. The film is a comedy built on the board game Cluedo, and it wants to keep you guessing about who killed whom.
The setup works. The guests are a senator’s wife taking bribes, a disgraced psychiatrist, a closeted State Department worker, an army officer guilty of war profiteering, a Washington madam running a brothel, and a widow who married five men, all of whom died under strange circumstances. Each has been threatened by Boddy, and each knows the others have secrets too.
Trailer, via The Academy.
The Dinner Table
The dinner table scene is where the film earns its keep. Wadsworth reveals Boddy’s blackmail scheme, handing each guest a weapon — a candlestick, rope, lead pipe, wrench, revolver, and dagger — before turning out the lights. A gunshot follows, and Boddy is found dead.
The film then moves through a sequence of deaths: the cook is stabbed in the kitchen, the evidence is burned, the cupboard unlocked, the motorist killed, and finally Boddy himself bludgeoned with the candlestick in the hallway. The plot is clever, though it drags in stretches, and the pacing suffers from too many rooms and too many bodies to keep track of.
The Cast
The cast is the film’s strongest asset. Tim Curry plays Wadsworth with menace and wit, and Madeline Kahn’s Mrs. White, a widow whose late husbands all died under odd circumstances, gets some of the best lines. Christopher Lloyd’s Professor Plum, a disgraced former psychiatrist, and Michael McKean’s Mr. Green, a closeted State Department employee, both land well. Martin Mull’s Colonel Mustard, guilty of war profiteering, and Lesley Ann Warren’s Miss Scarlet, a Washington madam, round out the ensemble with energy.
Eileen Brennan’s Mrs. Peacock, the wife of a senator accepting bribes, anchors the chaos with a grounded presence. Lee Ving’s Mr. Boddy is a one-note villain, and the smaller roles — the maid Yvette, the singing telegram girl, the cop — get less room to breathe.
The Three Endings
Each screening of Clue showed one of three endings, a gimmick that gave audiences a reason to see it twice. That’s a clever marketing move, but it doesn’t change the film’s core problem: the comedy often misses its mark, and the mystery, while cleverly constructed, relies too heavily on coincidence.
“It’s not just a game anymore.”
That tagline sells a tighter movie than the one delivered. The humor leans on stereotypes — the madam, the closeted gay man, the senile widow — that feel dated today, and the satire aimed at the guests’ political crimes lands more as parody than as sharp commentary.
Clue is a film with a good idea and a strong cast that can’t quite rescue the script. The mystery is sound, the performances are solid, but the execution loses steam halfway through. It remains a cult favorite for its cast and its inventive structure, but as a comedy-mystery, it falls short.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
