Clue (1985)🕵♂️ Review
Murder, Blackmail, and One Hell of a Dinner Party
Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers shall we?
The trailer for Clue is such a wonderful little time capsule of 1980s comedy marketing. It immediately sells the basic concept: six mysterious guests, one creepy mansion, several weapons, a dead body, and absolutely nobody knowing who the hell they can trust.
But what I love about looking back at the marketing now is how difficult Clue actually is to summarize. Yes, it’s based on the board game. Yes, it’s a murder mystery. But calling Clue merely a murder mystery doesn’t adequately describe the insanity you’re about to experience.
It’s a whodunit.
It’s a farce.
It’s a slapstick comedy.
It’s a parody.
It’s occasionally a surprisingly legitimate mystery.
And by the end, Tim Curry is sprinting around a mansion explaining the plot at approximately 9,000 words per minute.
Released in 1985 and directed by Jonathan Lynn, Clue wasn’t exactly some enormous success upon release. Yet over the decades, it has developed into one of those movies whose reputation completely eclipsed its original reception.
And I think that’s because there’s simply nothing else quite like it.
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Before We Begin — Remembering Tim Curry
Before getting into the movie itself, I can’t review Clue right now without talking about Tim Curry.
Curry recently passed away at the age of 80, and going back to Clue so soon afterward makes an already fantastic performance feel just a little different.
What a career this man had.
There are actors who become synonymous with one character, but Curry somehow managed to create several performances that different generations could immediately recognize.
For horror fans, there’s Pennywise in IT.
That performance alone probably traumatized an entire generation of children. Curry didn’t need elaborate CGI or constant transformations to make Pennywise frightening. Sometimes all he needed was that voice, that enormous smile and those eyes. His Pennywise could be hilarious one moment and absolutely horrifying the next.
Then you have something completely different like the Plaza Hotel concierge in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
He’s not the villain. He’s not even one of the movie’s biggest characters. Yet Curry takes this incredibly simple role and makes it unforgettable. The suspicious expressions. The exaggerated politeness. That gigantic grin when Kevin plays the gangster movie audio. Curry could take the smallest reaction and make it ten times funnier simply through his face.
And, of course, there’s Wadsworth in Clue.
For me, this is one of the definitive Tim Curry performances.
Wadsworth requires Curry to be sophisticated, nervous, sarcastic, mysterious, physically comedic and eventually completely fucking unhinged.
There are scenes in Clue where I’m barely laughing at the dialogue anymore. I’m laughing because Tim Curry is delivering it.
His physical comedy is phenomenal. His timing is phenomenal. His facial expressions are phenomenal. And when this movie finally removes the brakes and lets Curry explain everything that happened, he doesn’t merely steal the movie.
He grabs the movie, throws it over his shoulder and runs around the mansion with it.
That’s the beauty of Tim Curry as a performer. Whether he was terrifying you as Pennywise, making you laugh in Home Alone 2, commanding the screen in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or frantically recreating an entire murder mystery in Clue, you remembered him.
And that’s ultimately one of the greatest things you can say about an actor.
You remembered him.
Movies don’t disappear when the people who made them leave us. Their performances remain exactly where they left them. New generations discover them, old fans revisit them, and for a couple of hours they’re right there again.
So while this review is ultimately going to be a celebration of Clue, it’s also my little way of saying:
Thank you, Tim Curry.
Thank you for the scares.
Thank you for the laughs.
Thank you for Pennywise.
Thank you for that wonderfully suspicious hotel concierge.
And thank you for Wadsworth.
Rest in peace.
Now…
Shall we get on with the murder?
—
Non-Spoiler Plot Overview
Clue takes the classic board game and somehow turns it into an actual narrative.
It’s 1954, and six strangers have been invited to an isolated mansion for dinner.
They aren’t using their real names.
Instead, they’re given aliases.
Professor Plum. Mrs. Peacock. Colonel Mustard. Mrs. White. Mr. Green. Miss Scarlet.
Waiting for them is Wadsworth, the mansion’s butler, who knows considerably more about these people than he’s initially willing to reveal.
Their mysterious host, Mr. Boddy, eventually arrives, and we discover that every guest has something to hide.
Then somebody dies.
And suddenly everyone in the mansion has to determine who committed the murder, where they did it and what weapon they used.
Sound familiar?
Except the bodies don’t exactly stop piling up.
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Character Rundown
Tim Curry’s Wadsworth is the beating heart of Clue.
He’s technically our guide through the madness, except you’re never entirely sure how much you should trust him. Curry plays him with this incredible nervous energy that gradually escalates alongside the movie itself.
Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White is another absolute standout. Kahn understood something incredibly important about this movie: sometimes the funniest possible delivery is to act like what you’re saying is deadly serious.
And, yes, we’ll eventually have to discuss “Flames… flames… on the side of my face…”
How the hell could we not?
Christopher Lloyd as Professor Plum is wonderfully sleazy and strange. It’s also fun seeing Lloyd in something where he isn’t Doc Brown because his comedic instincts are still immediately recognizable while the character is completely different.
Martin Mull as Colonel Mustard plays the wonderfully confident idiot beautifully.
Lesley Ann Warren as Miss Scarlet brings this deliciously sarcastic confidence to everything.
Eileen Brennan as Mrs. Peacock feels like she’s approximately three seconds away from a nervous breakdown for most of the evening.
And Michael McKean as Mr. Green gets some of the movie’s best physical comedy.
The brilliance is that nobody feels like they’re starring in a different movie.
Everyone understands the assignment:
Take this ridiculous situation completely seriously until taking it seriously becomes ridiculous.
—
Pacing / Episode Flow
Clue is only around 90 minutes long, and that’s damn near perfect.
The beginning takes enough time establishing the mansion, characters and mystery that we understand what’s happening.
Then the first murder happens.
And from there?
GO.
The movie becomes increasingly frantic as characters split into groups, discover additional bodies, accuse one another, misunderstand situations and desperately attempt to keep everything under control.
And the escalation is fantastic because Clue doesn’t begin at maximum insanity.
It earns it.
The first portion is relatively controlled.
By the final act, Tim Curry is practically doing cardio while solving a multiple homicide.
That’s escalation.
—
Pros
The cast is easily one of Clue’s greatest strengths.
There isn’t a weak link here. Everyone has different comedic rhythms, and watching those rhythms bounce off one another creates much of the humor.
But Tim Curry is still the MVP.
The screenplay is also remarkably clever. Adapting Clue sounds like one of those Hollywood ideas you’d hear and immediately ask:
“Okay… but what’s the story?”
Jonathan Lynn and John Landis somehow found one.
And they didn’t merely slap the character names onto an unrelated murder mystery. The rooms matter. The weapons matter. The suspects matter. Secret passages matter. The fundamental question of who killed whom, where and with what matters.
It’s unmistakably Clue.
I also love the mansion itself. This is exactly the kind of giant, stormy, isolated mystery mansion I want from something like this. Characters constantly disappearing through doors and running between rooms turns the house itself into part of the comedy.
Then there’s the dialogue.
This movie is ridiculously quotable.
And finally, the multiple endings.
I won’t discuss how they work until spoilers, but taking one of the board game’s defining characteristics—the solution changes every time you play—and translating that into multiple possible endings was brilliant.
—
Cons
I genuinely struggle with this section.
Is every single joke equally funny? No. There are occasional gags that don’t land quite as hard as others, and someone watching Clue specifically for a serious Agatha Christie-style mystery might find the increasingly ridiculous second half jarring.
But those aren’t substantial problems for me.
This is one of those rare comedies where I don’t want it longer, I don’t want it shorter, I don’t want a different cast, and I don’t want it considerably more serious.
It knows exactly what it is.
—
Final Thoughts
Clue shouldn’t work this well.
It’s a movie based on a board game where colorful pieces move around a mansion while players guess whether Colonel Mustard murdered somebody in the library with a candlestick.
Somehow, that became one of my favorite murder-mystery comedies.
It’s witty without sacrificing slapstick. It’s ridiculous without becoming completely meaningless. It’s a legitimate mystery wrapped inside an increasingly deranged farce.
And nearly forty years later, it’s still incredibly entertaining.
Revisiting it after Tim Curry’s passing inevitably adds another emotional layer.
But I don’t think Clue should become a sad movie because Curry is gone.
Quite the opposite.
This is exactly the kind of movie worth watching when remembering him.
Watch him run.
Watch him scream.
Watch him explain.
Watch those facial expressions.
And most importantly, laugh.
Because few actors could make absolute chaos look as effortless as Tim Curry.
—
Rating
10/10
One of the great comedy mysteries, one of the great board-game adaptations, and one of Tim Curry’s greatest performances.
Mr. Curry, you absolutely killed it.
…Okay.
Considering the movie we’re discussing, perhaps unfortunate phrasing.
—
SPOILER WARNING
From this point onward, I’m discussing the murders, killers, multiple endings and basically every secret passage hidden inside this damn mansion.
If you’ve somehow gone this long without seeing Clue, go watch it first.
Because spoilers ahead.
—
Spoilers
The genius of Clue’s ending is that the movie doesn’t merely reveal what happened.
It turns the explanation itself into the climax.
Wadsworth gathers everyone together and announces that he’s figured everything out.
And then Tim Curry fucking EXPLODES.
He races from room to room reenacting the entire evening. He recreates people’s movements. He runs upstairs. He runs downstairs. He points. He shouts. He slams doors. Everybody follows him around the mansion like increasingly confused ducklings.
It’s one of my favorite extended comedy sequences because Curry commits to it with an almost frightening amount of energy.
Then we get the multiple endings.
“That’s how it could have happened.”
Beautiful.
The original theatrical gimmick was particularly crazy: different theaters could receive different endings, meaning audiences could actually see different solutions depending upon where they watched the movie.
The home release ultimately presents the endings together, and I honestly think that’s become the definitive way to experience Clue.
The first ending reveals Miss Scarlet as responsible, using Yvette to commit several murders before killing Yvette herself. Wadsworth reveals he’s an FBI agent and apprehends her.
Then:
“That’s how it could have happened.”
Wait, WHAT?
The second ending gives us Mrs. Peacock as the murderer. She escapes the mansion only to discover the authorities are already waiting for her.
And then we arrive at:
“But here’s what really happened.”
This is the ending that goes absolutely nuts.
Rather than one person committing everything, nearly everybody killed somebody.
Professor Plum killed Mr. Boddy.
Mrs. Peacock killed the cook.
Colonel Mustard killed the motorist.
Mrs. White killed Yvette.
Miss Scarlet killed the cop.
And Wadsworth reveals himself to actually be Mr. Boddy, having manipulated the entire situation so he can continue blackmailing everyone.
Then Mr. Green reveals he’s an undercover FBI agent and shoots him.
And after all that madness, the movie still has one final joke waiting:
> “I’m going to go home and sleep with my wife.”
Perfect.
And we HAVE to talk about Mrs. White.
Madeline Kahn’s:
> “Flames… flames… on the side of my face…”
is legendary for a reason.
What makes it even better is that Kahn famously improvised that moment. You can almost watch her brain constructing the sentence while she’s saying it.
She’s describing murdering Yvette and somehow turns homicidal jealousy into one of the funniest moments in the entire movie.
That’s Clue in miniature.
Someone is discussing murder.
And I’m crying laughing.
The ending also reinforces why Wadsworth is such a perfect Tim Curry role. For most of the movie, Curry has to share the stage with this phenomenal ensemble.
Then the climax essentially says:
“Okay, Tim. You’ve been very patient.”
“The mansion is yours.”
And Curry proceeds to devour the fucking scenery.
Looking back at Clue now, that’s probably what I’ll remember most.
Not simply that Tim Curry was funny.
Not simply that he played Wadsworth.
But that unmistakable energy he brought to a performance where you couldn’t imagine anybody else doing it quite the same way.
Clue gave us several possible answers to its central mystery.
But there’s one question where I don’t need multiple endings:
Who steals the movie?
Tim Curry.
Case closed. 🕯️🔪🦚
