Before there was a Rihanna-stuffed “Battleship” movie and a planned Adam Sandler-led “Candy Land” flick, there was 1985’s “Clue.” At the time, making a movie from a board game seemed like an absolute absurdity. Which is why it’s no surprise that the big-screen adaptation of the whodunit board game was, by all accounts, a dud.
Critics panned it and audiences didn’t know what to make of the movie, which was released with three different endings shown in different theaters, to capture some of the mystery of the game.
Even its stars Tim Curry, Christopher Lloyd, Madeline Kahn, Michael McKean and Martin Mull couldn’t lift it up, and it nearly faded into obscurity.
Since then, the film has found a cult following, with midnight screenings and events throughout the country all year long, including one tonight at The Actors Fund Arts Center, 160 Schermerhorn St., in Brooklyn, also featuring a costume contest, refreshments, a DJ and a Q&A with director/writer Jonathan Lynn and star McKean.
Here, Lynn runs down the five reasons why “Clue” has become the ultimate Halloween cult movie:
-
1. That colorful cast
Everett Collection The all-star cast, including the brilliant Tim Curry in the central role as Wadsworth, are all recognizable to us now, but in December 1985, when the movie came out, Lloyd’s “Back to the Future” was barely five months old, McKean’s “This is Spinal Tap” had been released just a year before and Martin Mull was a decade away from popping out in disguise as Gene Parmesan on “Arrested Development.”
“I didn’t want any of them from the beginning,” Lynn says. “I was English — I didn’t know who they were.”
He was a fan of Kahn’s and got Curry to appear in the film because the two had been school chums since they were 14. The pay wasn’t very good but Lynn ended up with the perfect ensemble anyway.
-
2. The twist endings
Everett Collection Lynn’s decision to include three different endings was clearly ahead of its time — especially in today’s era of viral campaigns and after-the-credits teasers. The studio’s hope was that people would see it once and then rush to see it again with the different ending; instead, audiences were just turned off.
“If the filmmakers didn’t know how they wanted to end the film, why would [the audience] go and see it,” Lynn says. “I constructed a story that you could find three logical explanations for, and that backfired badly.”
We won’t spoil the endings here, but fun fact: A fourth ending was shot where Wadsworth kills everyone, but the filmmakers thought it was too dark to include.
-
3. The slappy dialogue
Everett Collection “Clue” pumps along at a zippy pace, with banter that makes you forget how intractably slow the actual game is.
Colonel Mustard: “Why is J. Edgar Hoover on your phone?”
Wadsworth: “I don’t know, he’s on everybody else’s, why shouldn’t he be on mine?”
Most of that was on purpose, Lynn says. He modeled the snappy tempo on “His Girl Friday.”
“It goes unbelievably quickly. This is the pace we’re aiming at,” he says.
“In retrospect I think it went too fast.”
Almost none of the movie was improvised, save for Kahn’s famous line as Mrs. White about her “flames” of anger.
-
4. It's kinda like playing the game
Everett Collection While “Battleship” basically was an excuse to make a “Transformers” meets “Independence Day” knock-off, “Clue” actually follows the standards of the game. The weapons are there, each one suspected of being a murder device; the characters resemble their color-coded playing pieces; and the rooms are laid out similar to the game board — including secret passageways!
Working in the key details of the source material — something adaptation writers from “Super Mario Bros.” to “World War Z” seem to have a problem with — is an achievement in its own right.
“It was a very tricky writing job. I think I was the sixth writer who was hired by the producers,” says Lynn. “Within a straitjacket of those fixed rules I had to come up with a complicated and interesting and funny story.”
-
5. It's actually a cool story
Zaniness aside, “Clue” actually plays out like a pretty good mystery story. All of the endings are believable given the plot, and you never quite know what the characters’ true motivations for being in the mansion are until the final “real” ending.
It’s fun and silly, but with just enough dark-and-stormy night elements to make it spooky Halloween viewing material.
Lynn, who went on to direct “My Cousin Vinny” and “The Whole Nine Yards,” is still dealing with his first film’s new-found success.
“A lot of young people saw it as kids and absolutely love it,” he says. “It spoke to kids in some ways it didn’t speak to grown-ups in the 80s and the 90s.”
For more information on tonight’s event, go to: www.actorsfund.org/communityartsfestival