Murder by Death
(Robert Moore) 1976
Yeah, so I enjoyed
Murder by Death a good deal when I saw it when I was about 12 years
old… This prompted me to order it when I saw it was being released on DVD, and
I’m realizing, at the ripe old age of 23 that sometimes, you can’t go back.
This parody of murder mysteries is almost passable, but so far from great that I
wonder what was in the water at my parent’s house that made me enjoy it. There
are indeed some small pleasures to be found here. Certainly, Peter Falk’s
Bogart impression is pretty damn funny, even to the cynical 23-year-old guy that
I’ve become. His dialogue is a mishmash of nonsensical non-sequiturs,
hilariously elaborate clichés, and proclamations that he has to go “to the
can.” The big problem with this though is that there are about a dozen other
characters, none with anything near the same appeal. The most god-awful of the
lot is Truman Capote, as Lionel Twain (ho-ho), the flaming master of ceremonies
(he apparently got a Golden Globe nomination, which makes sense since this was
during that award’s Pia Zadora days).
Looking like Elton John as the Pinball Wizard in Tommy, the guy is
clearly out of place among the group of assembled sleuths. His running gag
incessantly points out that Peter Sellers’ Chinese Detective Wang (ho-ho)
fails to use proper grammar (ho-ho).
This might all be
forgivable if there was actually a decent mystery to be solved, but there
isn’t. Apparently, the film is attempting to poke fun at the way that many
detective novels cheat when presenting a wrap-up to their mysteries, but by
making its own resolution completely incomprehensible it hasn’t done a very
good job. As such, the film is obviously constructed so that we get to watch
each of the six detectives arrive at the castle where this all takes place, each
show off a bit of their prowess, each go to bed and face danger, and so on.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with ensemble writing that attempts to give
equal running time to each of its members, but when it’s so obvious about it,
the pacing of the film suffers and the tension drops off dramatically, since we
know the story won’t proceed until everyone delivers their one-liner.
There’s little that’s remarkable about the film’s production, outside of
some decently generic art direction, and the direction doesn’t do a lot to
remove the staginess of the endeavor. Overall, Murder by Death stands out
to me now as such a scuttling of an inspired premise that it makes me think that
perhaps my teenage appreciation of Clue might have been equally
misguided.
**
01-01-02
Jeremy Heilman