Board-game murder mystery

Press, 24 July 1986, Page 22

Board-game murder mystery

The suspicious characters and sinister rooms made famous by the popular board game have come to life in the com-edy-whodunit, “Clue," which will start tomorrow at the Savoy. The lavishly-designed film stars a mansionful of talent: Eileen Brennan as the senator’s wife, Mrs Peacock; Tim Curry as the oh-so-British butler, Wadsworth; Madeline Kahn as the blackhearted widow, Mrs White; Christopher Lloyd as Professor Plum, a bizarre psychiatrist; Michael McKean as the genteel civil servant, Mr Green; Martin Mull as Colonel Mustard, a blustering U.S. Army officer; and Lesley Ann Warren as the sexy and cunning Miss Scarlet. Co-starring are Colleen Camp as Yvette, theFrench maid, and Lee Ving as Mr Boddy.

The film-makers have expanded on the game to create a comedy that also entertains as a murder mystery in the classic tradition of delicious and stylish whodunits.

The butler, the maid and the cook — plus a few others — are new characters invented for the film, and each one is both a suspect and a potential victim. For mysterious reasons

at the film’s introductory scenes, a bizarre group of people are summoned to a luxurious dinner party in an elegant but longdeserted American gothic mansion, somewhere in New England.

From left, Lesley Ann Warren as the seductive and cunning Miss Scarlet; Eileen Brennan as the senator’s wife, Mrs Peacock; and Madeline Kahn as the blackhearted widow, Mrs White, in the boardgame murder mystery, “Clue,” which will start at the Savoy tomorrow.

In tiie course of the evening their * darkest secrets are revealed; the gathering becomes dan-, gerous for all and 'fatal; for some as it escalates from nervous apprehension to frantic terror. ;