Cheesy Movie of the Week #2- Clue

Welcome to the second installment of my weekly segment. This time, I am going to introduce you to a film from a very interesting niche market: movies based on classic board games (yes, this market exists... Scrabble already has two movies). Clue, which consists of an all-star cast including Tim Curry ("Rocky Horror"), and Martin Mull (everything), succeeds in being both one of the most awesomely cheesy movies ever, and providing a fairly decent murder mystery.

The key to Clue's hilarity comes in three forms: the awesomly quircky characters, the cheese-filled dialogue, and the abrupt, blunt pacing achieved. These can be attributed to the combination of an amazing cast, and the writing/directing team of Jonathan Lynn ("Yes, Minister"), and John Landis (many films, including "Animal House").



The cast of characters corresponds to those in the original board game. it consists of...
Eerie, and somewhat mousy 'black widow' Mrs. White, played by Madeline Kahn.
Lusful, 'creepy old man', Professor plum, played by Christopher Lloyd.
Loud, gossipy Mrs. Peacock played by Eileen Brennan.
Bumbling, stubborn Colonel Mustard, played by Martin Mull (who always seems to play bumbling, stubborn authority figures).
Homosexual, awkward Mr. Green, played by Michael Mckean (who is revealed in one of the endings to actually be straight).
Tim Curry plays the butler, Wadsworth, who acts as a sort of leader for all of the events. They are also joined by a ditzy french maid (Colleen Camp), and a few others. Although they all play stereotypes, the actors all succeed brilliantly in playing these stereotypes to a tee, and using them to create an abundance of cheesy awesomeness.

The plot is basically that of the board game: the motley crew is gathered in the home of a rich millionaire, Mr. Boddy, played by the unfortunately named Lee Ving. There, the millionaire attempts to blackmail them all with secrets he knows about them, but then the lights go out, and somebody murders him... the only question is who murdered him, where, and with what? (Actually, we know with the revolver in the study, but there are a series of other murders that use different weapons and locations, such as the murders of the cook and the maid, which is good enough for me). In their search for the real murderer, the cast searches the house for clues, and awkardly tries to work together to discover the truth, while more and more people die.

The cheesy dialogue I mentioned earlier is woven into all parts of the plot, and basically consists of subtle one-liners, mostly puns (half of which people usually miss on the first viewing, giving the film much re-watch value, as you always catch a new funny line). If you want an idea of the type of puns here, just think of Airplane!, but with a darker edge (and if you haven't seen Airplane!, watch it before you do anything else ever). The subtle, quick pace at which these are delivered takes advantage of the idea that the funniest jokes are the simple, straightforward ones: the characters don't even have a chance to respond to the comments with more than a brief look, which allows for many hilarious moments.

The blunt pacing of events is another huge source of comedy. I don't want to spoil too many of these events for people who haven't seen the film, but one of the best examples would have to be a singing telegram girl who is casually shot dead after one line of her song, and then promptly ignored as the plot progresses. The way that severe events, such as someone being shot dead, are treated in the same brief, blunt fasion as the one liners gives for an awesome, kind of dark humour that completely sells this cheesy movie for me.

Now on to favourite quotes. I think dialogue is super important to a film, especially cheesy ones, and I will therefore be including favourite quotes from every film I review so you guys can get a chance to experience what the dialogue is like. Here's some examples of the puntastic Clue:

Mrs. White: He had threatened to kill me in public.
Miss Scarlet: Why would he wanna kill you in public?
Wadsworth: I think she meant he threatened, in public, to kill her.

Mrs. Peacock: Uh, is there a little girl's room in the hall?
Yvette: Oui oui, Madame.
Mrs. Peacock: No, I just wanna powder my nose.

Wadsworth: Nobody. No body, that's what we mean. Mr. Boddy's body, it's gone.

Add lines like this to a large amount of overdramatic screaming and running around, and you have Clue. Plus, awesome scenes where Tim Curry attempts to demonstrate how he thinks a murder happened by running around and acting out the part of everyone involved. I would especially recommend Clue to fans of black or dark comedy, but if you just like comedy or cheesy movies in general, or you enjoy Tim Curry (which it's kinda hard not to) I'd still suggest you watch it for a great time.

Anyway, peace, until next time.

And if you can't find the movie, you can get it here: