Clue
Clip | 4m 43sVideo has Closed Captions
This film honors it's source material and pays attention to the small details.
This film honors it's source material and pays attention to the small details. Host Mikayla Daniels talks Clue and "The Red Scare" from the 1950s, during which this film takes place.
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SATURDAY NIGHT CINEMA is a local public television program presented by KSPS PBS
Clue
Clip | 4m 43sVideo has Closed Captions
This film honors it's source material and pays attention to the small details. Host Mikayla Daniels talks Clue and "The Red Scare" from the 1950s, during which this film takes place.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Welcome to my web comments on the Saturday Night Cinema broadcast of “Clue” from 1985.
I'm Mikayla Daniels here to share a bit more about the film.
As I mentioned in my on air comments, this film is one of my all time favorites and has been since I was about 8 or 9 years old.
I grew up in Alaska, where we lived and we only got two channels, NBC and PBS.
So we did also survive a lot on VHS tapes to keep us entertained.
My grandparents, who lived in Idaho at the time, had sent up a VHS copy of this film, and I immediately became obsessed with it.
So much so that anytime I had a friend spend the night, I would make sure we watched the tape of this movie.
Decades later, I will still watch this film any time I see it on TV or a streaming service.
One of my favorite parts of the film, and one that is most often quoted, is when Mrs.
White played by actress Madeline Kahn, has her “Flames on the side of my face” monologue about her hatred for a Yvvet, the French maid.
The entire monologue was ad libbed by Kahn and fit her character so wonderfully.
So this film is based on a board game, which in 1985 was kind of a unique adaptation, but it worked.
The characters, of course, are all named after the characters in the board game, and you see all the weapons from the game in the film as well.
There was an incredible amount of detail to bring it all together while honoring the original source material.
One of those details is that the secret passages in this movie lead to the same rooms that they do in the board game.
The kitchen leads to the study and the conservatory leads to the lounge.
I must say, the secret passages made me wish I lived in a house with a bunch of secret passages too.
And that's still a dream of mine as an adult.
And another example of attention to detail.
All of the rooms are in the correct order as they are on the board game.
Clockwise; hall, lounge, dining room, kitchen, ballroom, conservatory, billiard room, library and study as well as a cellar, a non suspected area in the game.
There are also several new rooms not seen in the game, including a bathroom, a master bedroom, an attic and a nursery.
This film is considered a cult film now and very popular, but it wasn't that way when it came out.
The film had very mixed reviews, with Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times giving the film two out of four stars, writing that “it has a promising cast, but the screenplay is so very, very thin that the actors spend most of their time looking frustrated, as if they'd just been cut off right before they were about to say something interesting.” The film also didn't do well financially, with a box office gross of 14.6 million in North America, which was just short of its $15 million budget.
Part of the poor box office may actually have to do with the three endings.
It was director John Landis his idea to have three different endings playing in different theaters.
His reasoning was that if the audience caught on to this gimmick, they would each go to see the film three times.
His plan backfired as people decided that they didn't want to pay three times to see the same film.
Ironically, the three endings are part of what makes this film so iconic now.
Just goes to show that sometimes when a film comes out, it may not truly be appreciated until decades later.
Now, this may be a comedy film based on a board game, but that doesn't mean it was devoid of a strong theme.
The film is set in the 1950s and is a political satire, as the characters secrets are all tied to Cold War era political scandals.
In the opening scene, when Wadsworth checks on Mrs.
Ho the cook.
The live televised Army McCarthy hearings are on the kitchen's television.
One phrase spoken by Senator Joseph McCarthy that can be heard clearly as Wadsworth departs is, “professors and teachers who are getting their orders from Moscow.” This Senate hearing is also the same one in which the famous quote of, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?
At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” is spoken by head counsel for the Army, Joseph N. Welch.
With the coverage of the hearings taking place on live television.
The events of this film all take place on Wednesday, June 9th of 1954.
I hope you enjoyed my extended comments on Clue, and be sure to look around our Facebook page and KSPS.org for more blogs, polls, and trivia from all the hosts and Movie Maverick Mike.
And don't forget to tune into Saturday Night Cinema on KSPS PBS.
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