Let me set a scene for you—
You’ve just received an anonymous letter inviting you to a dinner party at a remote mansion. The address is listed, but the sender and their reasons for inviting you remain unclear. When you arrive, you find yourself in the company of a handful of strangers who all seemingly received the same mysterious letter as you. Shortly after the unusual dinner begins, one of the strangers is murdered. The circumstances present many possibilities, but you know one thing for sure—the killer is among you—and you don’t know who you can trust. The key to your own survival hinges solely on one single question—who done it?
In today’s episode—we take a loving look back on 1985’s Clue. We’re going to analyze the film and the board game that inspired it and break down exactly how this cult-classic comedy inspired an entire sub-genre of murder mystery cinema. From Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot trilogy to Rian Johnson’s Knives Out trilogy—this movie may be far more influential than you originally thought. Let’s get into it.
Before the age of eccentric detectives solving seemingly impossible murders became commonplace in our homes and theaters, and long before global phenomenons like Among Us or Werewolf, a humble English musician called Anthony E. Pratt developed a board game that would go on to become one of the most longstanding game night staples in the world. That game was originally called Cluedo—but we’d eventually come to know it as simply—Clue.
The game was simple, 6 players are each assigned a character and a brief profile on who they are. When someone is murdered, you need to explore the game board (which is set in a giant mansion) to find hidden passageways and various means of committing a murder. You then need to use the game’s many clues to identify who committed the crime, why they did it, and of course, HOW they did it.
The game plays on paranoia and suspicion as you play to find the killer before they can get their hands on you.
By the 50s and 60s, the game was being sold in toy stores around the world in various styles. Over the years, this continued. Clue became a franchise of board games with multiple variations, and rose to prominence as a concept that had huge financial potential. Key to the distribution of the game was Parker Brothers, who made the popularized version of the game we know now. They distributed Clue from the late 40s all the way to the early 90s, when it was purchased by Hasbro.
And in 1985, Hollywood took a chance on the game by opting to adapt it into a live-action murder mystery film laced with iconic actors and actresses in a campy comedy that played on the mystery of the original format.
The film’s plot follows the synopsis of the game in having a handful of strangers all show up to a mysterious dinner party where one attendee is killed, prompting the remaining characters to solve the murder while avoiding becoming victims themselves. The film stars Tim Curry in one of his best roles as Wadsworth the Butler—and he’s joined by the likes of Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Brennan, Madeline Kahn, Michael McKean, Martin Mull, and Lesley Ann Warren.
Jonathan Lynn wrote and directed the film’s plot with help on the story from John Landis. The film was released in 1985 to mixed reviews, skewing mostly negative. The majority of the movie’s criticism was in the thinly written script, and characters having less to do in the movie than it seemed in the game. However, the film was championed by some who praised its faithful translation of the source material and the iconic “multiple endings” presentation, which saw the initial release use 3 different endings—which would vary depending on which theater you saw it at. This caused conversations among audiences who would discuss the ending they saw—only to be completely confused and surprised to find out their friends saw something totally different. This is where the movie REALLY innovated, and we can trace its general cult status back to this marketing stunt.
The movie’s strength lies in the mystery itself—HOW could people be getting murdered all around you in a controlled, closed-off environment. At certain points, murders are committed while everyone is standing in the same room—further adding to the mystery that (in my opinion) is satisfyingly laid off with all 3 endings.
In one ending, it’s revealed that Miss Scarlett (Lesley Ann Warren) was the killer. She’d been killing off anyone who knew about her secret business—she was basically a pimp and had a staff of ladies of the night.
In another ending, Mrs. Peacock is our killer—and she was in it to protect her reputation and her high-political standing.
And finally, the ending in which there are multiple killers. In fact, I think this ending, which is considered the canonical ending, has everyone murdering someone except for Mr. Green, who didn’t do anything. And the motives here were simple—they were all being blackmailed and trying to kill whoever was threatening to air their dirty laundry.
All of these endings were pretty good on their own, but together, they created conversation. They showed Hollywood that the key to winning over an audience with a murder mystery was to constantly subvert expectations. We see this all over the place. While Murder on the Orient Express was written in novel form in the 1930s, this kind of thing hadn’t really been explored in cinema. There was a Hitchcock-inspired suspense story, but it was being told in the tradition of Abbott and Costello. Every character felt like the main character in their own right—and the endings reflect that.
The days of the whodunit were among us (get it?) and before long, other movies similar to Clue would pop up left and right. The film’s box office performance and critical reception forced the studio to retire the franchise before making any more movies—but the bones of this film could be felt rattling with creative ideas that future filmmakers would draw inspiration from.
In 1994, a little-known comedy whodunit called Radioland Murders was released, which drew direct inspiration from Clue in its witty and fast-paced delivery, and frantic filmmaking style. This movie is pretty cool—you probably haven’t seen it—but you should.
Other films like the Knives Out saga and the Poirot trilogy are essentially reimagined versions of Clue that add or subtract certain things to make them more fresh and modern.
For example, these movies automatically eliminate a key aspect by having their detectives be the protagonists. We know THEY didn’t do it. We’re being given a perspective into the crime and a point of view by which we can analyze the other characters.
In Clue, it could LITERALLY be anyone. We don’t have the innocent POV to analyze the crime through—because we’re IN the crime and every character is a suspect. This is something that requires a level of writing and understanding that not everyone can pull off.
The one anomaly in the genre is the detective character, which there kind of isn’t in Clue. There’s a cop who stops by at one point and has a very funny interaction with Wadsworth—but other than that, we don’t have a trained observer or Sherlock Holmes figure to help us find the clues. We have to rely on the mostly clueless (get it?) characters stumbling across secret passages and back rooms.
We can also see many of these tropes taking shape throughout Clue—the murder is almost always set in an isolated environment without much room for outside influence. This creates some “impossibility” and adds more mystery to the story, but also adds more chance for surprise when the twist is revealed. If nobody leaves the room, you can only investigate so much.
There’s always an ensemble of potential suspects with unique motives being drip-fed to us throughout the film. There’s ALWAYS a host or person inviting the group together—sometimes they themselves are the killer. And of course, the thing that EVERY SINGLE ONE of these movies does—is make a long-winded and complex monologue explaining the who, what, where, and why of the crime at the end. These are ALL things that can be traced back to THIS movie.
Also, tell me Tim Curry wasn’t born for this role. I could make a top 5 list of his best movies, and this one is on that list every time.
But what about the comedy? All of these movies have moments of chuckling, which is important to keep the films from taking these bombastic crimes too seriously—but murder mysteries didn’t used to have this element. Clue really brought it to the forefront, save for movies like Murder by Death, which predates it. In 2022, Sam Rockwell led the flop See How They Run, which felt like a deliberate parody of murder mysteries as a genre—most of the meta-humor and satire of the film was pulled directly from Clue and the MANY clichés it created with its existence and cult fandom.
Even some of the Scream movies have elements of Clue in them that I can’t help but lovingly call out every time I watch one. There’s a self-awareness to these movies that feels kind of baked into the concept, but really just adds an extra level of mystery. When a movie sets up a rug pull that we think we see coming, only to suddenly surprise us with a reveal far more sophisticated than we thought—that feels like Clue leaking itself out and reminding us that long before we loved this stuff, they were cleverly delivering it in this TIMELESS box office bomb.
Clue made a whopping $14.6 million at the box office, which was less than it cost to make the movie. Critics didn’t understand it, some audiences didn’t embrace it—but off the back of this bold concept and whacky adaptation of a vintage board game came the rise of one of the most popular sub-genres in Hollywood.
This movie deserves to be mentioned among the best in the genre and should be credited as one of the earliest examples of the modern whodunit. If you love these kinds of movies but haven’t checked this one out—or haven’t seen it in a while—you’ll want to pop it in and revisit ASAP.