Retro Review: Murder by Death

Welcome to Retro Reviews, a new column designed to replace From the Vaults. These reviews will deal with films that the Cap'n saw years ago, has seen with some regularity, or simply wanted to review outside of the "current" film scene. Depending on the film, I may attempt reviewing these "older" cinematic offerings by replicating my initial experience, but more than often, I will simply try to review the films as though the Cap'n of today traveled back in time and saw them fresh.

I cannot pinpoint precisely when I first saw Neil Simon and Robert Moore's Murder by Death, although it was indubitably on VHS: my father had a habit of taping films he had a fondness for in the early days of VCRs. Like many films that flew over my head - including Blade Runner, Animal House and, oddly, Disorganized Crime - Murder by Death amused me, although the young Cap'n was woefully bereft of any understanding who Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, or Earl Derr Biggers where, let alone their signature mystery protagonists.

The film, adapted by Simon from his own play, is a send-up of mystery novels, using parodies of the genre's most famous characters: Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, Miss Marples, Monsieur Poirot, and Charlie Chan*. Moore and Simon assembled a "who's who" cast to portray their caricatures: Elsa Lanchester (The Bride of Frankenstein, Mary Poppins) as Jessica Marbles, Peter Sellers (Doctor Strangelove, A Shot in the Dark) as Sidney Wang, David Niven (Wuthering Heights, The Guns of Navarone) and Maggie Smith (Othello, Clash of the Titans) as Dick and Dora Charleston, James Coco (Man of La Mancha, The Wild Party) as Milo Perrier, and Peter Falk (The Princess Bride, Wings of Desire) as Sam Diamond.

Additionally, their companions include Eileen Brennan (The Sting, The Last Picture Show), Richard Narita (Dallas, Drop Dead Gorgeous), Estelle Winwood (Camelot, The Producers), and James Cromwell (L.A. Confidential, The Green Mile), and the host of their murder "party" is Truman Capote, with Alec Guinness (Kind Hearts and Coronets, Lawrence of Arabia) and Nancy Walker (Girl Crazy, Rhoda) as the domestics.

Marbles, Perrier, Diamond, Wang and his son, and the Charlestons are invited to the estate of Lionel Twain (Capote) for purposes unknown. Immediately, they face assassination attempts, staged rain, artificially rickety bridges, a screaming doorbell (Fay Wray's from King Kong, to be exact), the blind butler Bensonmum (Guinness) and the deaf-mute Yetta (Walker). During dinner, Twain appears in a psychedelic fashion and demeans the detectives (and by proxy, their respective creators), accusing them of being frauds. He challenges them to put their reputations on the line by solving a murder that will happen that night to someone in the dining room. Before the night is over, the detectives deal with a dead, naked butler, a maid that may actually be a mannequin, and Twain - the victim of his own mystery? Are things what they seem, and can the aloof sleuths work together to leave 22 Twain in one piece?

I won't linger on the machinations of Murder by Death's plot: the mystery is deliberately nonsensical, designed to offer clues that go nowhere, opening up plot threads Simon has no interest whatsoever in tying up. The film also functions nicely as an entry into the "old dark house" sub-genre, and one might argue that Twain's wager is reminiscent of The House on Haunted Hill. Two lingering images stick with me from a childhood encounter with Murder by Death: the opening credits, which consist with a pair of gloved hands opening a storage chest, revealing a pop-up diorama of the cast, drawn by Charles Addams, accompanied by a slightly playful, possibly menacing score by Dave Grusin. The second, without risking anything, is the moment following the final "twist" in the film, where the actual culprit laughs hysterically, fading to black during a blood-curdling, maniacal howl. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be chilling, but to this day it rings in my brain, inducing shudders.

Robert Moore and David M. Walsh's over-lit cinematography gives Murder by Death a "made-for-TV" aesthetic (one not served well by half a cast's pedigree in television) but Simon's script keeps the film moving at a brisk pace with wit to spare. While I may not have known the nuances of the great detectives, I could appreciate the actors I recognized (Guinness, Sellers, Falk, Smith, and Niven) and enjoyed the witty, erudite banter between the characters. The script relies heavily on wordplay, and over the years I came to appreciate the ways that Simon manages to pay homage to the source material while criticizing their shortcomings - Twain's final speech, pointing out the cheap tactics used to keep audiences in the dark, stands out particularly. Guinness manages to sell a gag as ridiculous as putting a blind butler with a deaf-mute maid together, and while Falk's quasi-Bogart impersonation leans towards broad, Brennan's Miss Skeffington pulls him back.

Do you need to know The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon, Murder on the Orient Express, The Mirror Crack'd, or The Chinese Parrot? My suggestion would be that its advantageous to have some idea who Hercule Poirot, Sam Spade, Charlie Chan, Miss Marple, and the Charles couple are, but as a film, Murder by Death is successful to the uninitiated. Its stature in "spoofs" or "parodies" tends to be overshadowed by the better known Clue, but for my money the former is funnier, snappier, and better performed than the latter. It remains one of my favorite underrated comedies, one I'm continually surprised to discover that not only people have missed, but were unaware the film existed in the first place.



* While they did appear in an earlier incarnation of the film, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson were deleted from the closing moments of the story.