Clue - "Redemption Is Just A Red Herring"

Clue (1985)

K: Clue the movie proves it's not just a game...anymore. Now it's a movie. A very funny, smart movie. I know we're going to agree with that statement. The elements of the game are in the movie, but that's not what moves the story. It's a comedy/mystery and that's what works.

H: Tim Curry's character makes the guests go through the house much as players of the game go through the house to solve the crime. I was hoping that the killer, the room, and the weapon would be literally in an envelope on the mantel, but perhaps that's too much to ask. The movie plays with the fact that it's inspired by the game, but ultimately rises above it, mostly because we as the audience don't have to try to reuse old checklists because someone before us used them all up.

K: As a movie, were there any characters that you liked besides Wadsworth (Tim Curry)?

H: I was always partial to Col. Mustard playing the game, but I liked Mr. Green because in all three of the proposed endings, he's not the bad guy. For me, the 1970s likeness of all the characters on our Clue game at home are forever committed to my memory, but I like the cast of the movie a lot. I like Prof. Plum too.


K: How much of playing the game do we bring to the movie, because I was always Ms. Scarlet.

H: Who we "always were" says a lot about who we are, because I think most people have a favorite pawn to play as. We bring a lot of the game to the movie, because we're already familiar with the layout and the vocabulary of the house. It's neat to explore the "real" house when we're used to seeing the floor plan. Of course we're delighted that the secret passages we used are in the movie.

K: It was really clever that they were committed to using the weapons and all the weapons represent a character. If they found a dead body with a dagger in it, then it seemed like it should be obvious that the person given the dagger by Mr. Body was the killer, but it wasn't.

H: I like how the uses of the weapons are demonstrated, because playing the game I had a tough time imagining how to use the wrench and I always thought of the rope as at a hanging.

K: I always knew how to use the weapons. I would rather watch the movie than play the game because I'm usually playing the game with one other person and that's not fun.

H: Remember that we once had a clue party where we played the game while watching the movie - really the best of both worlds, though unfortunate about Mr. Body. We never meet him in the game, so it's nice to put a name/names to the face.

What does it mean about a person if he/she always plays as a certain character?

K: Prof. Plum is smart, he's a professor. Ms. Scarlet is obviously young and beautiful. Col. Mustard is a bit of tight ass.

H: My brother was always Mr. Green, so I think of him as being short and naive. Mrs. White was a grandmother figure and Mrs. Peacock was also a grandmother figure.

K: But Mrs. Peacock was flightier.

H: Does our characterization of the women game pieces and the portrayal of women in the movie say something?

K: No, because everybody was guilty of something in the movie and that made them equal.

H: But in the game, according to us, as a woman you're either young and beautiful or old and possibly flighty. There's no woman executive, for instance.

K: They're all capable of murder. That puts them on equal ground.

H: Why does everyone have the Washington D.C. connection in the movie? In the game, it's never revealed what sin Mr. Body has committed against the guests. For the movie, blackmail is an interesting motive. Communism, as we learn, is a red herring.

K: Government and secrets go hand in hand. I never put a lot of thought as to why they killed Mr. Body in the board game.

H: I always felt his absence while playing. I wondered who he was, but not really why he wa killed. I thought he was an innocent. It's interesting that he's the one character not connected via name to a color.

K: Isn't it interesting that as a mystery it proposes multiple endings? Does the movie have multiple endings because the outcome of the board game is different every time? Or is it because in the board game someone makes an accusation and the first few are usually wrong? If they're right, the game ends and that's kind of lame. The movie ends on the right one. As a mystery it wouldn't work if it had only one of those endings because all the endings contain different pieces. It answers the little mysteries in the characters' lives.

H: Most of our talk has been board game, movie, movie, board game. Despite saying that the movie transcends the game, we find it difficult to talk about just the movie. Maybe there are three different endings to turn "mystery" on its head. This movie plays with the genre by making it impossible to solve on your own. Most mysteries I've read/watched are didactic in that they point to only one killer/scenario. They make me feel dumb that I couldn't put all the pieces together myself. This movie lets me off the hook, because it doesn't give me all the clues necessary to solve it. It says mysteries can't be solved, only theories can be postulated.

K: Maybe that's why I don't watch a lot of mysteries.

H: We liked the Spanish Prisoner (1997).

K: But you'd have to be in MENSA to figure it out. Or "Clue" gives you too many clues. Every ending takes provides background that the rest of the movie doesn't provide: monkey brains, the motorist had an employer, the singing telegram.

H: Exactly. Details which the audience couldn't have known are revealed almost exactly when the killer is. There's no chance to put it all together before the mystery is revealed. When you walk away from the movie, which ending do you believe and which ending do you want to be true?

K: The third ending is the one I believe to be true, because every character is responsible for a death. That's a good ending. I don't want Wadsworth to be the bad guy because he's so smart and the butler is the cliched killer, but it works for the movie.

H: Wadsworth is the detective in this movie and we like our detectives to be a little law-skirting, but not the worst in the bunch. Mysteries are about latching on to the most rational person and hopefully that person has the drive to solve the crime. Why do we want everyone to be a little guilty? Do we think the characters are beyond redemption? When offered redemption at the end by the undercover cop, they think they're above it.

K: They're guilty of what they're being blackmailed for, so we shouldn't be surprised that they're guilty of murder.

H: Except Mr. Green who, in the third ending, isn't even who he says he is. He has a wife!

K: Mr. Green's lie was easy because no one's going to question him on that. People made comments about Mrs. White and Ms. Scarlet. Everyone was comfortable talking about everyone's else's guilt but Mr. Green's.

H: And what he's being blackmailed for isn't a crime. It's sly of him to choose to reveal the reason for his blackmail before he's exposed.

K: Prof. Plum was supposed to be a doctor and couldn't figure out whether Mr. Body was dead. Everybody made mistakes like that but Mr. Green. He was always adament that he didn't commit the murder(s).

H: He was also the only one willing to tell the cop the truth. What about the double entendres and the cleavage?

K: It reminds me of a long Frasier episode. The dialogue is smart and spoken by well-to-do people. What do you want to say about sexuality in the film?

H: First of all, it's interesting that it has only a PG rating, though I can't think of anything specifically that violates that rating. This must have been how the Parker brothers imagined that people would play the game - by making obvious sexual advances on one another to try to solve the crime. Sexuality in this movie gives it the soap opera kind of appeal. We want to know these peoples' secrets and this is a slice of those secrets.

This movie would make a good play because of it's reliance on dialogue and physical action and it's relatively constant location, the mansion.

K: It would be a pretty big set. I'm not saying it can't be done.

H: I would imagine the different rooms denoted by a different sign on the wall. It also uses props well. It has the gun on the mantel...and the candlestick, rope, wrench, etc.

K: Is that how you think of theater?

H: I think of theater as being a collection of props and costumes and sets and a bunch of people that need to turn all that stuff into a reality for several weeks. When can we start production?