Inexplicable Movie Review: Clue

I touched upon this briefly with my Chevy Chase entry yesterday, and the lovely Sadako from Dibbly Fresh offered some support for my opinion, but I'm a big fan of the movie Clue. Released in 1985 to little fanfare, a surprisingly good cast headlined by Christopher Lloyd (Professor Plum), Martin Mull (Colonel Mustard), Michael McKean (Mr. Green) and Tim Curry (the butler) spices up the proceedings.

The plot of the movie is based vaguely on the popular board game. All the characters and weapons from the game are in the movie, with the additions of a butler, a foxy maid, a cook, a cop, a singing telegram, and the characters' host, Mr. Body. Of course, the game is just a game, so the movie invents the idea that they're all being blackmailed for various misdeeds by Mr. Body.

These misdeeds range from the heinous to the silly and funny. Specifically, Mr. Green is being blackmailed because he's gay, which lends itself well to several 1980s style jokes. The plot itself is very contrived, as seemingly everybody is connected to everyone else like it's a god damn Agatha Christie novel, but the strong work of the actors keeps things fun.

However, a gimmick no doubt killed the film at the box office. See, the creators had the great idea of giving the film three different endings, with only one being the “real” ending. Therefore, to fully experience the film, you'd have to watch it three times. However, the only difference between the broadcasts was the five to 10 minute ending segment, meaning you'd pay three times for 15 to 30 minutes of extra content. (In 1985 dollars, this was about $12, but still, time is money!)

This “special feature” probably hurt the film's take, but it gives Clue an odd, campy sort of replay value. In VHS, DVD and television airings, all three endings are now tacked on at the end and differentiated by cue cards. I first saw the movie on Comedy Central around the turn of the century, when DVDs were still sort of rare. As a result, every time it came on I felt like I was watching something special and different. For similar reasons, I loved when Hulk Hogan broke the fourth wall in Gremlins 2 and shouted at them to resume the movie. (Also, Hulk Hogan is cool, brother!)

The Clue movie picture comes from this pretty good blog about... Only Good Movies. The Hulkster picture is from this blog reviewing American Gladiators.

Inexplicable Movie Review: Congo

Seriously, this is a scene from Congo.

Because I couldn't think of anything better to write about tonight, I decided to write an inexplicable movie review. School isn't quite back in session yet, at least not for substitute teachers, so I set my sights on a fertile commercial movie - Congo.

The main appeal of Congo as a cheesy bad movie can be summed up in one line: Killer gorillas get shot by lasers. If that sounds appealing at all to you, then there is a good chance you will enjoy Congo. There are also some surprisingly good characters because of three actors involved - Ernie Hudson, Tim Curry and Laura Linney.

Congo does have some weird, convulated plot that I'll try to sum up. Basically, an expedition from Big Evil Company goes into the jungles of - wait for it - Congo, in order to find a super-valuable supply of blue diamonds. Now, these diamonds aren't valuable because they're diamonds, but because they are apparently super-potent sources of energy that can be used in the satellites used by Big Evil Company.

Of course, something bad happens to the expedition, as they are seemingly killed by something. Laura Linney plays a good scientist for the evil company, and she gets charged with a salvage mission, since her fiance was on the first expedition. Along the way, or for some unknown reason, she meets some superpussy guy who is teaching a gorilla named Amy sign language.

Ernie Hudson (a.k.a. the black guy in Ghostbusters) is the leader of the new expedition, and he is a sort of super awesome hired gun. He is by far the coolest character of the movie, since he gets cool lines like, "I'm known as the great white hunter, although I happen to be black." He is basically the super cool black guy of the movie, like, well, Billy Dee Williams in every movie.

The other stand-out character would be Tim Curry as a sleazy, kinda-rich guy who is financing a portion of the expedition, or some such nonsense. It really doesn't make much sense, but Curry gets some good lines. Linney is also good, in that she's not super annoying like Amy the Gorilla and her wimpy handler, who's name I refuse to look up.

Anyway, back to the reason why you need to watch this movie: Lots of gorillas get shot, by machine guns first, and then by lasers. I really don't know why this is so satisfying to watch, but it is. Most of the rest of the movie is forgettably bad, but hey, watch it with a friend or two, and you'll have plenty of content for your own MST3K session.