Clue (Jonathan Lynn, 1985)

Clue (Jonathan Lynn, 1985)

Cast: Eileen Brennan, Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean, Martin Mull, Lesley Ann Warren, Colleen Camp, Lee Ving, Bill Henderson, Jane Wiedlin, Jeffrey Kramer, Kellye Nakahara, Howard Hesseman. Screenplay: John Landis, Jonathan Lynn. Cinematography: Victor J. Kemper. Production design: John Robert Lloyd. Film editing: David Bretherton, Richard Haines. Music: John Morris.

Clue was something of a dud with critics and audiences when it premiered, but it has developed a following over the years. The idea was a daffy one: Make a movie based on a board game. But the game's roots are themselves cinematic: the murder mystery that takes place in a mysterious mansion, with an array of suspects and murder weapons. So all the movie version needs to do is provide backstories for the various characters -- Miss Scarlet, Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, et al. -- and some way of staging the murder so that the killer's identity remains unknown until the final reveal. Of course, the charm of the game is that the players are the detectives and the killer, weapon, and location of the crime vary every time it's played. Unfortunately, the screenwriters -- and there were many other hands in the script beyond the credited ones -- decided to go crazy and provide a multitude of victims, as well as three potential endings. The gimmick of showing a different ending each time was one reason the film flopped in theaters, and only really made sense when it was released on video and all three solutions to the mystery could be sampled. What the film has going for it is mainly a cast of comic actors familiar from Mel Brooks movies, Saturday Night Live, and other TV shows. There are a few bright lines but also a lot of unfunny running around, and any comedy that opens with a gag about stepping in dog shit has to work awfully hard to overcome that.  

Animal House (John Landis, 1978)

Tom Hulce in Animal House

John "Bluto" Blutarsky: John Belushi
Eric "Otter" Stratton: Tim Matheson
Donald "Boon" Schoenstein: Peter Riegert
Lawrence "Pinto" Kroger: Tom Hulce
Kent "Flounder" Dorfman: Stephen Furst
Daniel Simpson "D-Day" Day: Bruce McGill
Chip Diller: Kevin Bacon
Dean Vernon Wormer: John Vernon
Marion Wormer: Verna Bloom
Prof. Dave Jennings: Donald Sutherland
Katy: Karen Allen
Clorette DePasto: Sarah Holcomb
Mayor Carmine DePasto: Cesare Danova

Director: John Landis
Screenplay: Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney, Chris Miller
Cinematography: Charles Correll
Art direction: John J. Lloyd
Film editing: George Folsey Jr.
Music: Elmer Bernstein

The granddaddy of gross-out comedies, Animal House has a certain innocence to it 40 years later. For one thing, it goes lightly on the gross-outs, the most famous one being Bluto's zit joke. We don't even get to see Flounder throw up on Dean Wormer. For another, without their familiar lined faces and grayed, thinning hair, such veteran actors as Peter Riegert, Tom Hulce, and Kevin Bacon look almost naked. The film has maintained its reputation, even being inducted into the National Film Registry in 2001. There are things in it, however, that wouldn't pass muster today, including the blatant objectification of the young women, especially in the scene in which Bluto spies on them undressing. And would any reputable filmmaker today dare to include the scene in which Pinto debates whether to rape the unconscious Clorette, abetted by a roguish devil and a prissy-voiced angel? There are touches of unchecked homophobia throughout.  John Landis's direction, too, sometimes seems a bit stiff-limbed, as if waiting for the audience to laugh before proceeding with the next line. There are flashes of wit in the screenplay, as when Bluto refers to the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor, and Boon tells Otter, "Forget it, he's rolling." But many of the sight gags, such as the climactic assault on the homecoming parade, weren't worked out enough in advance, the exception being the marching band that gets led into a blind alley and then can't extricate itself. Still there's a fine energy to the performances, and even Dean Wormer gets to make a good point: "Fat, drunk, and stupid" really "is no way to go through life." But mostly the film is a strong reminder of what we lost with the early death of John Belushi -- and, more recently, of Stephen Furst.