CLUE – With All Three Endings! – Screens at The Tivoli Midnights This Weekend (June 22, 23)

“Life after death is as improbable as sex after marriage!”

CLUE plays midnights this weekend (June 22nd and 23rd) at The Tivoli Theater as part of the Reel late at The Tivoli Midnight series.

Way back in 1985, before we were translating literally every board game, video game, or action figure into a movie, there was CLUE.

As in the Parker Brothers board game, seven suspects find themselves in a mysterious mansion with the body of someone who has been murdered by one of them. Was it Colonel Mustard (Martin Mull) with the revolver in the conservatory? Or was it Miss Scarlett (Lesley Ann Warren) with the rope in the billiards room?

Could it be both?

CLUE was filmed with three possible endings. That’s 321 fewer endings than the board game permits, but two endings more than offered by most movies.

“What are you afraid of, a fate worse than death?” Professor Plum (Christopher Lloyd) asks.

“No, just death,” replies Mrs. Peacock (Eileen Brennan). “Isn’t that enough?”

When I first saw this film back in 1985, I found it a tiresome retread of Neil Simon’s MURDER BY DEATH with director Jonathan Lynn’s pratfall-heavy jokiness a poor substitute for Neil Simon’s scriptwork. Even the cast seemed a bit of a comedown, though Eileen Brennan was in both films. It was not a box-office success then, but time has done funny things to CLUE. Not only has it developed a huge cult following, but my own eyes have been opened to the slow-burning cleverness of Lynn’s well-presented concept and a cast that, perhaps because it had no A-list stars, felt more need to dig into the material and get every last bit of funny out of it. You might miss Mrs. White (Madeline Kahn) the first time she says her husband just “lies around on his back all day”, but you know enough to laugh the second time.

“Husbands should be like Kleenex, soft, strong, and disposable,” says Mrs. White.

“You lure men to their death like a spider with flies!”

“Flies are where men are most vulnerable.”

The lines are seldom as good as that – though the late Ms Kahn seems to get the best ones, and there’s some weak business involving pseudonyms and minor characters that only gets in the way of the central business. I still groan at the line “Communism was just a red herring“.

But CLUE succeeds in its central mission of merry-making, aided by the multiple-ending gimmick and Tim Curry’s central role as the zany butler Wadsworth who recaps the entire movie in five minutes. The pratfalls are a lot better than I thought the first time, too.

Now you can see CLUE, and ALL THREE of its endings on the big screen when it screens midnights this weekend ( June 22 and 23) at The Tivoli as part of their Reel Late at the Tivoli Midnight series.

A Facebook invite for the event can be found HERE

https://www.facebook.com/events/2071386713103505/

The Tivoli’s located at 6350 Delmar Blvd., University City, MO. Admission is a mere $8!

The Tivoli’s website can be found HERE

http://www.landmarktheatres.com/market/st.louis/tivolitheatre.htm

Here’s the Reel Late at the Tivoli Line-up for the next few weeks:

June 29-30          THE EVIL DEAD

July 6-7                 ROBOCOP (1987)

July 13-14            AKIRA

July 20-21            YELLOW SUBMARINE

Aug. 29-30           BLAZING SADDLES

Sept. 5-6              PURPLE RAIN – 30^th anniversary

Sept. 12-13         GHOST IN THE SHELL