Pubcast 82: Clue

If you're not listening to the podcast, the pair is winning. That's what James Morrison. Welcome to the Pope cast. Sit down and enjoy a point.

Welcome to the clue episode of the podcast. Allison and Eric joined me to discuss this strange quirky murder mystery comedy from 1985 that was inspired by a board game originally published in 1949. This movie is packed with some of the top communicators of the time. Tim Curry, Martin Mul, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKeon, Eileen Brennan, Madeline Pahn, and Leslie Anne Warren and Telling Camp.

They all give great performances and this movie is pretty much funny, top to bottom. This is sort of the definition of a cult classic comedy and it didn't make much money at the box office but has grown in popularity through TV and video. It's extremely rewatchable, it has tons of jokes and quotable lines throughout, and even has three different endings. So sit back, grab a brandy, see if it really was Colonel Mustard in the ballroom with the candlestick, and we break down, clue.

Every person in this room has the perfect motive for murder. What do you mean? Murder. But only one of these suspects is the murderer.

Use it the timidness degree. Why are you screaming? Because I'm right now, what? The three of you?

Or the militant Colonel Mustard. Why does the killer kill you next? Sit down. If.

If. Mrs. White, who helped her husband on his way. What's the matter of life after death?

Now that he's dead, I have a life. Mrs. Scott, who's helped many men along the way. Practice makes perfect.

Professor Plone, who's looking for a way? I'm okay, I'm okay. Mrs. Peacock.

I have absolutely no idea what we're doing here. But I am determined to enjoy myself. Or did the butler do it? No.

No. There are some pictures and I choose to an evening of mystery. In the movie that makes a scene of crime. Don't move me!

Clue. It's not just a game anymore. All right, Clue, 1985. This is the 37th anniversary, I guess, of this.

I'm already smiling, just thinking about it. I don't know. The no-nonsense plot. Six guests are anonymously invited to a strange mansion for dinner.

But after their host gets killed, they must cooperate with the staff to identify the murderer as the body's pilot. Sounds pretty good. That says absolutely nothing. It's nothing, but it's- They have just read the description of the board game.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's nothing. I wish the description was just like the directions I had playing the game. Roll the card.

Okay, overall reaction to the movie. When and where you saw it? It doesn't matter when and where, but thoughts on when it came out. When did it come out again?

December of 1985. I can't say for sure, but I'm 99% sure I saw in the theatre. I'm sure I would have. There's no reason I wouldn't have an 85 in junior high.

I am trying to think if this was a movie that we did like a friends group. Yeah. Viewing of. Yeah.

I don't know because I feel like I knew all of the endings. I mean, I couldn't figure it. I didn't figure them out, but I saw all the endings together. So I feel like it might have been a slumber party or something like that.

I saw it. I didn't know there were multiple endings. I didn't know any of that stuff. All I knew was it had a bunch of comedic actors that had seen other stuff and would have known from, you know, I mean, Tim Curry was all over the place, but Christopher Lloyd from taxi.

I mean, back to the future of that same year. Michael McKeean was sweetie or Winnie. Eileen Brennan has seen in private Benjamin. Right.

Madeline Taun was all over the place. So all these guys, it's like, oh, it's like a who's who of comedic actors of the early 80s. Great. I was in.

Well, you know, Ron Richardson. Yeah. Eric is too young. He would not have seen it in the theater.

It would have been on TV or something somewhere. Yeah. The first time I saw it was definitely home rental. Yeah.

Yeah. Looking at this movie, it, this movie doesn't get made anymore. It doesn't exist anymore, except for one notable thing. We'll come back to that one later.

But the very minute, a comedy mystery. It's a tight 134 minutes. It's nice. It's good.

Was that 134 minutes? Wait, 134 minutes or an hour and 34 minutes. Sorry. Hour and 34 minutes.

Okay. I was right down. We have the colon in there. So is that with all three endings?

Does that make it even tighter? Um, like the run. I think that's what one ending. Okay.

So like what, what you would have seen in the theater. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So this couple of years ago, knives out came out and that was obviously an other Christie style big house murder mystery. A lot of people in one place had a clue field to it. They even called it the clue house. I think in the movie, maybe if not, if not the actor was talking about the movie, we talked about it as well.

That way. That would make a bit worse. I had, I think mentioned in the movie. I don't remember that.

You live in this big clue house and house from clue. No. So that exists, but short of that, this type of movie is rare in the past 20 years. Yeah.

Yeah. So it was certainly the only one based on a board game until, was it Battleship? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, well, Eric, do we count dungeon and dragons as a board game? Oh my God. Cause I had a, I think you got a, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I was all, I saw this in pieces of that movie. I don't know. There was a two with the Monopoly guy. All right.

So that's a board game character. Definitely. Sure. Candy land.

Is that a movie? No. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Getting the cage with Nicholas cage and Saturday night live. Well, is one of his next projects was going to be hungry hungry. Impose.

She's in letters. The extended universe. Yeah. Okay.

Let's do this real quick. Let's do box topic performance. Okay. This is a weird one.

It doesn't fall in either year, really. It straddles because it came out in December early December. Okay. So it's not going to appear in any top, whatever list.

Right. Now, number shows that it wouldn't appear no matter what, but we'll see. 85 was a good year. We've done this before.

Let's do it again. Back to the future. Number one, 190 million. Right.

Beverly Hills cop. Number two, Rambo first blood part two. Well, 150 million. Number three.

Rocky four comes in at four. Yeah. Yeah. I was.

You've a lose. Cacoon. Number five, witness a sneaky number six. The goonies.

Number seven. Police Academy to number eight. I don't know that I really know those. I don't.

I mean, I know of them, but I don't know that I've watched more than one once. Yeah. I think number two was fine. Number three.

I don't think it fell off. Yeah. Yeah. They weren't good for what they were at the time, but they did their terrible.

And then number nine. Number 10. Number nine is flesh. I don't click hanger.

Well, so clue. And 85. Yeah. Clue made eight million dollars.

Okay. And 86 made six million dollars. 14 million. What would, how do, what did it cost to make it 15 million?

Oh, really? Wow. It lost money or because of rounding error call it breaking even. Oh my gosh.

That's before advertising. Don't they say it's you got a. I mean, almost double. Yeah.

I don't know. Was that the case in the eighties? So yeah, we're not, not make money. I mean, it became such a cult classic though.

Like. Yeah, I'm sure like whatever they lost, they made up for in rental and home video. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it is almost like Shawshank where it is on lots of different channels. Yeah. I mean, they, the licensing rights and selling off the DVDs and VHS and, you know, putting it on the AMC or whatever the hell it is effects HBO, whatever they must have made back then we eventually, but in the short term. So this movie, obviously we mentioned it's got some Agatha Christie, a lot of Agatha Christie in there.

It's obviously a comedy comedy mystery thriller, whatever. Yeah. There are identified. There are a bunch of lists of these things and I compiled a bunch of them.

I put together those items plus I think there'll be a couple of my own just on in there of 12 murder mystery tropes. Okay. They're going to be in every movie. So I'm going to go through them, see if you want to add anything to this list.

Right. Here's something. If you think of something that's added to the list and we'll get 1315, whatever. You have the gathering.

Yes. Everybody in one place. Right. For some reason the detective is there, which makes no sense.

I mean, he comes there on purpose in knives out, but like a lot of these things he just sort of at the party or shows up randomly or whatever. In this case, the detective is kind of was where it's the most part. He goes through the whole thing at the end. There's a murder.

Obviously there's an unsympathetic victim. Someone you know about who died and no one cares. Right. They did something bad.

So there's to a certain extent there is a justice or a situation. Yeah. Everyone in a confined space like a space place and a confined space, a big old house, a train, a boat, an island, everyone, no one can escape. So they're there.

I threw in. There's always a butler or maid. I don't mean literally. I mean, like someone who is slightly outside the main group who can kind of.

But it goes in and out where they please. It's between the group. Yeah. Everything.

There's a red herring or a distraction. A misdirection of some sort. A weapon is found. The weapon or a weapon is always found.

Everybody has tons of allies. There's proof all of the place that nobody did it. There's proof that everybody did it for somebody. Everybody had a motive.

There's at least one fake death. Someone's face or death somehow. Right. And then there's always a twist ending.

Okay. You're missing that it had to be raining outside. Like there has to be a thunderstorm of some sort. So it's keeping everybody there.

That's a good one. There's usually a couple jump stairs. So like it's like barking dogs or something like that. Like they had those dogs outside.

But they're always dogs. It feels like there's dogs. Dogs in there. I'm also going with the knives out situation.

Yeah. It's pretty solid. Eric. Well, you mentioned that there's always a butler made there, but it's the butler always did it.

It's always the joke. The butler did it. Yeah. Yeah.

And we can get to this later. But in this case with one of the endings, the butler did do it. Yeah. And also like a good secret passage.

That's right. Like a secret passage or something like that that somebody can sneak in without being seen. Yeah. Hopefully a bookshelf.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Pull the book from the ship.

Yeah. Find the right book. Right. Which is a book show.

Remove the candle. Yeah. Okay. That's good.

The run to make a score. So we know it didn't do super well. What was the audience score for Run to meet us. Remember, this is percentage of people who essentially gave it a thumbs up.

Yeah. It's like a discount. I'm going to go 82. I'll say 75.

The audience score was 86. That's solid. Sounds exactly what you think. Yeah.

Right in there. The quick score. What do we think? I think I was good.

I'm going to say 63. I think it's too slap sticky for critics. Yeah. Eric.

I'm going to go lower too, but I'll say 70. Yeah. I feel like critics wouldn't know what to do with that movie. I mean, like we talked about it say it's a movie about a board game, but then it's this crazy comedy.

I feel like, yeah, they just want to know what to feel or how to think. And it'd be. I can imagine a Roger Ebert being just pissed at me. I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to try out the movie that that was look good.

What did I expect to be? I don't know what to feel or how to think and it'd be. I can imagine a Roger Ebert being just pissed about the movie. I do not look out Rogers review, but yeah, I love it.

I think he would like the humor and I don't think he would love the whole thing. Critics gave it a 68. So a little more toy Eric, but you guys are right on it. I'm just going to dive into the trivia.

Okay. Most of the trivia that I wrote down is. to think about it this way. There are so many references and hints to the board game, in the movie, which you can get here and there, but I never paid attention to the details.

It's great. So we'll get there in a second. Okay, three endings were shot, as we talked about, and a different one was shown at each theater. All three are included in the video, the DHS version.

The DVD, however, in addition to showing all three endings, offers the option to play the movie with one randomly selected ending. I don't know, I mean, great. That's cool. To me, that sounds like this new DVD technology, we have the ability to do this.

Let's put this little work in there, but it don't dance. Yeah. Well, I was telling Declan about this movie, as I was watching it tonight, he's walking by after getting food, and I asked him if he had seen it. He's like, I feel like I've maybe seen parts of it, but he didn't really know what it was, so I explained it and I said it was actually, when it was released in theaters, there were three different endings, that if he went to theater A, it had one ending theater B as another.

He's like, oh, that's pretty cool. Like, that's, why don't more movies do that? So that idea was John Landis' idea, the original director, and he would have done some writing, have he done it, but he passed it on. That was his idea that, oh, if we have three endings, people will go see one and go to a different theater and see the other one, and then it'll boost up, this weird movie based on the board game that people may not see otherwise.

So you got a triple, triple where each time. Nope, didn't happen clearly, but it sounded good, but it didn't happen. Didn't it almost have like the opposite effect that people were kind of pissed about it? His plan backfired as people decided that they didn't want to pay three times to see the frame.

Yeah. To me, it just wasn't a good enough movie that people wanted to pay three times. Because people- Well, I think people didn't appreciate that movie yet. People will go pay three times for Star Wars though, but you know.

So, okay, the famous, and on this podcast in this group, very famous quote from Madeline Kahn, the flames on the side of your face. That little monologue of her hatred of a vet was fully islanded by Madeline Kahn. Of course. Obviously, you mean, no one wrote that.

Or it's the greatest bit of acting ever, because she is clamor-like trying to get the words that she wants to use, and it's so good. Well, that's when- Oh, that's why she's got that part. Right. She's a good comedian actress.

The shot of Tim Curry, while she's going through that and him watching her try and spit it out, it's fantastic. She wants to say six different things, and she just- You can't- You can't get it all, but it's so good. Okay, now there are a ton of references to the board game. I've got three- Oh, okay.

The color of each character's car is the same color as they're playing piece in the game. Yes. I did not notice that. Yes.

Colonel Mustard drives a yellow 54 Cadillac, 3062. This is white drives a black and white 1950 MG convertible. Miss Peacock drives a blue 52-peckerd. Mr.

Green drives a green 51 Plymouth. Miss Scarlet drives a 46-red Lincoln Continental. Professor Plum drives a purple 49 Cadillac. There she is.

Again. So, there we go. Miss Scarlet's car wraps as she's going to arrive from Mr. Green, right?

At the beginning. Professor Plum. Professor Plum. Yes.

And their clothes are like the opposite. Yeah. So, yeah. The women in this movie wear the opposite colors of their namesake.

Miss Scarlet wears green. Miss White wears black, but the inside of her coat has white. Miss Peacock wears gold and orange, but her- She does have Peacock feathers in her hairpiece or whatever. Mr.

Green wears no green at all, but with a blue suit and a red tie. And the mustard wears a dark brown suit and a light cream overcoat. And Professor Plum wears a burgundy vest and a gray suit. So, kind of plum.

Yes, burgundy, plum. Close. Yeah, we would think they would just lean into it. They did the opposite, which is probably, right, for the reason.

Okay. When everyone split off into Peir's, the partners correspond with the rolling order of the game. Oh, really? Oh, interesting.

I think, I don't know having not consulted the game in directions for this, but I think the key thing is Miss Scarlet. Because when they draw matches in the kitchen, whatever, it's like symbolic of a die role in the game. And there's a constant referring to ladies first in that scene because the Miss Scarlet character rolls first in the game. Oh.

Apparently. Somebody can back check this and tell me I'm ready, but that's right here. That's good. That's interesting.

All right. I like it. I like all the board games, though. That's the point of the game.

Even though it's largely meaningless, it's good that's in there. Okay. The secret passages in this movie lead to the same rooms that they do on the board game. The kitchen leads to the study and the conservatory leads to the lounge.

Well, even like the just the layout of the house, right? I got that. The movie said matches the layout of the house on the game. The rooms are in the correct order as they are on the board game clockwise.

The hall, the lounge, dining room, kitchen ballroom, conservatory, billiard room, library and study, as well as the cellar, a non-respected area in the game. There's also several- Is there access to a cellar in the board game? This is, there might be, but there was a UK version of the game that was slightly different. Yeah.

So who knows? Yeah, like maybe later versions of the game. Yeah. Yeah.

The park a floor in the hall resembles the clue board or game board. Right. Yeah. All the swears.

Yeah. Professor Plum indicates a dinner that he works for the World Health Organization, part of the United Nation Organization, which is UNOWHO. That means he works for, you know who. Oh my God.

That's fantastic. You never noticed that before, Elsa? No, it was not big attention. Oh boy.

I definitely didn't. I mean, I know the words and the letters, but I didn't put it together. I put it together as a kid. Wow.

Sorry, please. Look at the big brain on-brand. Professor Plum hyperthizers to the group that the brandy was poisoned. In the original clue game, and Cluedo in the UK, poison was included amongst the possible weapons and later reintroduced in the 1990s game, Clued Master Detective.

Nice. Okay. Another four game. I'm laughing, thinking about it.

So along those lines, there was apparently a fourth ending shot. I saw that in redolting. I read that too. That's never aired because it was too dark, but basically it was Wadsworth committed all of the murders and he had poisoned everybody with slow-acting poison.

So there was this whole, like he was doing this whole thing almost like to torture all of them. And then later comes out that they were all also poisoned. So it was again, using the poison. That was another murder weapon from the board game that wasn't widely used.

Did they say, they poisoned them with like, was it brandy? Not what I read, but it could have either been in the food that they ate or the drinks, but. And then Wadsworth leaves and the guard dogs that were- Oh, yeah. That were at the front door when he first came in, they were in the back seat of his car and they attack him in the car.

Yes. And that's how it ends for Wadsworth. So everybody dies. Oh my God.

So he kills everybody and then his dogs kill him. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it was considered to be too dark.

So I think they even said, I want to say that they did even shoot it, but you just never used it. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder like if at some point you never released that on some anniversary jing.

In 35 years, I've been two years ago, rather than the most recent chance. Yeah. Sorry. 40s.

I mean, I don't know. Okay, we talked about this one. If the final ending is considered the true ending given that Wadsworth pretends to be the mother for the majority of the movie, then in fact the mother did it. Mm hmm.

You know, the old trope. That's all I got for trivia. Anybody feel free to add it? I had two other little things.

One, the singing telegram was the guitarist from the Go-Go's. Yeah. So you originally from a kind of walk. Oh, that's interesting.

And the other that I had, and I think there's several kind of things like this in the movie, but when Professor Plum says 15 minutes until the police arrive that 15 minutes longer into the movie is when the evangelist comes to the door who turns out to be a police officer. Right. Or at the age or whatever. But there's a couple other ones, a couple other things like that, but they don't match up perfectly.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else?

That's all I had. Eric, did you have any? Now that's the top I had at the moment. I'll end up thinking of something later on and I'll blur it out, I guess.

All right. A couple of casting things here and there. I didn't dive deep into this because I just needed to do easy stuff, simple stuff. Every fisher was going to be a mister of it.

Original. Oh. Like she had the part. She was definitely going to be a mister of it, but she went into rehab.

Oh, no. Four days before filming started. Whoa. Leslie Ann Warren was cast as a last minute replacement.

Wow. I wonder how that would have been with her. Mister of it? Yeah.

I would think fine. Yeah. It's a different person, but it's a different person. I wonder if it would have been distracting though, I guess.

Definitely. Yeah. I thought it was the first time I didn't know this either actress's name. But when I saw Leslie Ann Warren, I'm like, oh, that's Susan's random look like.

Oh. They tried to get students random and get her and then she put in Leslie Ann Warren. Yeah. This day I kind of like that should be Susan's random.

Yeah. Why not? That's interesting. And it would have been another like natural return to Curry.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Okay. Other people consider, let me try that again. Oh. Rewind.

Yeah. That was mister. Oh. I think that's the goal of event, the maid included Jennifer Jason Lee, Demi Moore, and Madonna.

Well, Colleen Camp got the role and was like so fired up for this to try to get this. She went in in a French maid's costume. Oh my God. And the director, I think was part of the casting deal.

And he admitted like, yeah, she walked in in that outfit and she got the role 100% because of her cleavage. That was it. Wow. Like everybody else.

Oh. There was something that I saw, I wanted to go back and check it, but right before she is killed, when she that's like the silhouette of her, whatever, she drops to a French accent and speaks in an American accent to kind of show that she was faking being a French maid in that house that she really was, you know, working from the Starlight. Yeah. Which I thought was interesting.

The original choice for Wadsworth was, and I did not look this guy up. The actor named Leonard Rossiter Rossiter Rossiter. Most famous for the role of Rigsbee in Rising Damp from 1974. I have no idea what Indian name is.

But he passed away in 84 just before pre-production. They also considered Rowan Atkinson, Mr. Bean. That would have been interesting.

I would like to have seen that. At the time he wasn't Mr. Bean. Right.

And then they also considered John Cleese. Oh. Yeah. I mean, Tim Curry made that his part.

Of course. Like it was his role. The director picked Tim Curry because they were friends. They had a background together.

So, but another one we were kind of scrambling for the movie started. Now, here we, we got to talk about this guy. Mr. Bide.

Yeah. Right. Okay. So, in the same way I thought Leslie Enmoren was a lookalike for Susan Sarandon.

And they wanted her. So just got the next best thing. I thought Mr. Bidey, oh, they definitely wanted Robert De Niro.

And he just got this other guy who vaguely resembles De Niro. Oh, I was thinking of somebody else. Yeah. Like it's any Italian.

Yeah. So he's definitely Italian. I forget his name, but he's the lead singer, the front man for the punk rock band, Fear. Okay.

But the name he goes by his stage name is Lee Ving. Did you see this? So I guess that I don't know if this is true at all, but they brought him in because his name was leaving and they wanted to be able to say Mr. Bidey will be leaving soon.

Oh my God. I mean, that's a horrendous pun or play on words. Bad joke. And it's nothing.

No one cares. He is horrendous in this movie. He's so bad. He's very on in the movie at all.

And a little bit he is. He detracts from every scene. Yeah. He's so bad.

It's yeah. It feels like, okay, maybe this is supposed to be this bad. Like it's weird. I mean, I remember watching this.

Was there a scramble? Like did they not have somebody? I didn't see any of that. Or was he like, oh, this part, I know who to cast for Mr.

Bidey. It is leaving. I don't know. I remember in junior high or certainly high school rewatching it.

Like, oh, this guy is not an actor. This is terrible. Just get it right here after to play that. I couldn't be anybody.

Strange. It is weird. Yeah. Did you see any other casting issues?

I did not. Yeah. I knew about Carrie Fisher. It was, yeah, it was, they wouldn't pay.

They were going to let her leave the clinic to shoot the movie. But the insurance company refused to insure. And that's why they had to get more into replacing. Interesting.

Okay. Everybody's favorite. It is a recasting debate. It is time to recast debate.

Better close the door. It's time to be constubated. You want to make a statement here? Al, how strong are you feeling?

So I feel really strong. That's all because of that. Here's my approach. Here's why I think this.

I also recast the director. What? And I recast based on if the director was Wes Anderson. I knew you were going to say Wes Anderson.

Or Jordan Peele. Get out in a house. Right. And then I had, then I have another one that's kind of like all star kind of whatever it would be.

But when I, like when I thought of this, I'm like, oh, I can definitely make this. So you're going to give us for each character. You're going to give us the Wes Anderson character and then the Jordan Peele character. And then I've got, then I've got like all star cat, like somebody else.

You have a lot of things. But it, like this. All right. I will go first.

Let's start with Wadsworth. Okay. Or do you want to work up to Wadsworth? It's fine.

All star Wadsworth. Okay. This is the only one I had three options. Okay.

And I don't love, I don't love my third one, but it's fine. Number three, I thought, I mean, I definitely said this guy has to be British. Okay. It's got to be a British accent.

I said, Jude Law. Yeah. I said, James McAvoy. Yeah.

I like him. Yeah. I like him more than most people anyway. Yeah.

Or does he have hair? I can't hear of this one. Okay. And I leaned into number one being, Tom Hiddleston.

Oh, that's good. I think he's got enough personality to pull it off. I think it's good. Yeah.

I agree. Eric Wadsworth. This is the one where I have one name. I thought of it and loved it and didn't even bother to think about a second game over.

I think he's perfect. Michael Sheen. Oh, that is good. That is good.

I think you're right. That is good. I think that's a winner. Yeah, that's good.

All right. So my Wes Anderson, Gladsworth is Adrian Brody. My Jordan Peel Wadsworth is Donald Glover. Yeah.

And my kind of all star cast, Wadsworth is you and a Gregor. Okay. I'm trying to think about that. All three of those.

So think about a Wes Anderson version and then a Jordan Peel version. It's Donald Glover is perfect for that. The Wes Anderson version of this movie is, I don't know what to do with that. It's great.

I don't know. That's so all right. Eric, give me your Colonel Mustard. I have two Colonel Mustards.

Number one was Will Ferrell. That's actually my number two. And then the one that I, my number one choice would be Steve Carrell. Oh, that's good.

That is a good one. Steve Carrell. I only had one choice here. And I like it the more I think about it.

My Colonel Mustard is Terry Cruz. Oh my God. Wow. Okay.

All right. Big X military dude. Yeah. I know he's not exactly the Martin Mull.

Right. Yeah. All right. I got Owen Wilson in your Wes Anderson.

I've got Michael B. Jordan in Jordan Peel. And then in the all star I've got Jonathan Groff. Oh.

Who does both serious comedy? Yeah. I had trouble with Colonel Mustard. But if it's played as the comedy, I think of the chandelier dropping and I can see him playing that surprised.

Yeah. I'll tell you who I thought of for Colonel Mustard. I crossed it out. He can Michael Key.

Oh, yeah. I'm like, I want to put on this movie somewhere. Right. I'm going to put on this movie somewhere.