Murder by Death Film Review

To mis-quote Churchill, never have so many done so little. A cast like this being stuffed into this mediocrity should be a crime. Not that I expected much really. Way way back, my parents used to see every Neil Simon play that came to Broadway and I was dragged along. I never found them very funny. Pleasant with a few guffaws but stale and pointless. But clearly, I was in the minority as he was hugely popular back then. This film is not based on one of his plays but was an original script. I may be in the minority on this as well - fun being with all these great actors imitating famous literary detectives but still kind of pointless. The parody takes in characters who are Sam Spade. Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, the Thin Man and Charlie Chan in everything but name. Playing those roles are Peter Falk, Peter Sellers, James Coco, David Niven and Elsa Lanchester. Throw in Alec Guinness, Nancy Walker, Maggie Smith, Eileen Brennan and Truman Capote and you have a cast that spills over with talent. You get bonus points for guessing who Sellers plays. Alec Guinness was a joy for me playing the blind butler who keeps screwing up everything. Guinness can ever give this a certain polish.

Along with a companion, they are all invited to a large, isolated mansion on a dark and stormy night. There are immediately attempts on all of their lives. Other attempts are to follow. The host is Lionel Twain (Capote) who explains to them that at midnight someone in the room will be murdered and one of them will be the killer. It pokes fun at all the disappearing bodies and hidden room mysteries but never in a way that makes even a little bit of sense. They decide to all stay in one room and hold hands but a murder happens anyways. Or does it? Don't try to make sense of this but of course that is not the point. Just the idea of bringing all these detectives in one room should be funny enough and there are some moments that are amusing but with most of the jokes you can practically hear the thud of it hitting the ground.

My favorite part is the denouement at the end when one of the non-detective characters makes fun of the books they are all in - "You tricked and fooled your readers for years; you tortured us all with surprise endings that made no sense; you introduced characters in the last five pages that were never in the book before; you withheld clues and information that made it impossible for the readers to guess who did it. Millions of mystery readers are now getting their revenge". Revenge perhaps but too few laughs. This being the 1970s, there are of course a few racial, homophobic and female gender jokes that feel even creakier than they must have back then. Remember when it was just so funny to laugh at an Asian accent? Not so much anymore.