A Clue or Two

Video games are hardly my thing. Old-fashioned though it may be, I continue to be fond of board games, especially those that are clever or silly. From childhood onward, I’ve loved the Parker Brothers game, Clue. It was apparently devised in 1943 in Britain, where it was called Cluedo, and advertised as “The Great New Sherlock Holmes’ Game.” I don’t know the year of my parents’ set, the one I still have, but a note at the end of the instruction pamphlet politely tells the purchaser that “any question regarding the rules of ‘Clue’ will be answered gladly if a 3 cent stamp is enclosed.”

 Clue, for anyone who doesn’t know it, comes with a gameboard presenting the layout, room by room, of an English country manor. There’s a ballroom, a kitchen, a conservatory, a dining room, a billiard room, and a study, along with a few secret passageways. In my parents’ version, all these rooms are shown from above in sketch-like fashion: the billiard table once baffled me, and I decided it was a kind of very grand bathtub, with various round things floating in it. As a matter of fact there are no bathrooms at all in this stately home, nor bedrooms, for that matter. But we’re told that poor Mr. Boddy has been murdered. The job of the game players is to figure out (via the cards in players’ hands)  in which room the murder occurred, and with which weapon (a rope? a knife? a candlestick?) And of course, who was the murderer: the dashing Colonel Mustard? The glamorous Miss Scarlett? Wise old Professor Plum?  The dowager known as Mrs. Peacock? What I’ve discovered on the invaluable Wikipedia site is that the game has had many permutations over the years, with—for instance—England’s Reverend Green turning into a middle-aged businessman, then (in the most recent American editions) a handsome playboy. 

 I’ve been thinking about the game of Clue ever since I saw, this past summer, a presumably Broadway-bound production of a stage version that is both very silly and a great deal of fun, with lots of mistaken identity and an elaborate twist ending. This new play is an homage both to the game and to a movie that came out in 1985 and is still remembered fondly, at least by some. (Best in-joke in the play: as the characters are running madly from room to room in pursuit of the killer, someone says, “Who designed this house anyway? Answer: The Parker brothers.)

 That 1985 movie was blessed with a lively cast, including Eileen Brennan as Mrs. Peacock, Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White, Christopher Lloyd as Professor Plum, Michael McKean as Mr. Green, Martin Mull as Colonel Mustard, and the toothsome Lesley Ann Warren as a no-better-than-she-should-be Miss Scarlett. (One of the film’s best mysteries: how does her VERY low-cut dress keep from falling down?) There’s also Tim Curry (he of the Rocky Horror Picture Show) as a complicated new character at the center of the plot. All seem to be having a grand old time spoofing the murder mystery films of yore. But there’s also a gimmick that sets Clue apart. Three different endings were filmed, each of which identifies a different murderer, with different methods and motives. Presumably, audiences were supposed to be so jazzed by the idea of seeing variant endings that they’d show up at the cinemaplex more than once. It didn’t happen, but when the film came out on video, all three endings were available to be seen. And some people now regard this crazy little flick as a cult classic.