Movie Trivia: Clue

Posted by Stacy in Movies & SciFi, Neatorama Only on April 27, 2009 at 5:51 pm


I took to Twitter to ask for suggestions on my latest movie trivia post but made the stipulation of no ‘80s movies. I think I’ve done too many of them lately. But then skyesblue said, “I’d vote Clue, but you vetoed that,” and I was hooked, just like that. I love me some Curry – Tim Curry, that is, and Madeline Kahn was beyond wonderful as always. So, Clue it is, and I promise no ‘80s movies next week.

First, a quick reminder of who’s who:
• Professor Plum – Christopher Lloyd
• Mrs. White – Madeline Kahn
• Mrs. Peacock – Eileen Brennan
• Miss Scarlet – Lesley Ann Warren
• Colonel Mustard – Martin Mull
• Wadsworth – Tim Curry
• Mr. Green – Michael McKean

When moviegoers purchased their ticket to see the movie, they also received a slip of paper just like the one that you use to keep track of the people, places and weapons in the game.

Jane Wiedlin of the GoGos played the Singing Telegram Girl. She was also Joan of Arc in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Tim Curry says each of the principal cast only received $100,000 for the film, and they all had teeny-tiny trailers. So there were definitely no ego-trippers among them.

Clue was the first movie ever based on a board game, but it’s certainly not the last – Universal Pictures signed a deal with Hasbro last year to develop films based on Monopoly, Candy Land, the Ouija Board, Battleship and Magic: the Gathering. Stretch Armstrong was also included in the deal.

And, brace yourselves, there’s actually another Clue in the works. It was announced in February that Gore Verbinski has signed on to make another version of the board game-based movie for Universal. Ugh. Although… Johnny Depp as Wadsworth…? Anyone…?

Check out the floor in the Hall – it’s no coincidence that it looks an awful lot like the parquet floor on the original Clue game board.

It looks like an awesome old Gothic Mansion, doesn’t it? It’s quite convincing. But nearly all of the scenes were shot on a soundstage, except for those in the ballroom and the driveway gate scene. Sadly, the mansion used for the driveway scene burned down, so picture-hunters can’t even pose next to the big gate.

To make the set look authentically mansion-y, 18th and 19th century furniture and décor was borrowed from all over the place, including the estate of Theodore Roosevelt.

Each character drives a car the color of their name.

Keep your eye on Tim Curry whenever he’s in a scene with Eileen Brennan – he said he could barely hold a straight face around her becuase she was so hysterical. This is especially evident, he says, in the scene where she says “Hold out the gun.” He claims his shoulders are actually shaking from trying to hold in his laughter.

The movie took about two and a half months to make.

Three different endings to the movie were shot, and all of them were used! Imagine the confusion if a friend went to one theater and you went to another – “Wasn’t that great when it turned out that Mr. Boddy was actually the Butler?” “What do you mean, Mr. Boddy was the Butler?” OK, that probably wouldn’t have happened… it was well known that there were three endings, and newspaper listings even told you when each ending would be shown. The DVD shows you all of them, but you can also tell it to pick a random ending for you. The part where the movie splits into the three different endings is right after Wadsworth cuts the power.

Here are the endings:
• Ending A: The killer? Miss Scarlet. Yvette the maid used to work for her as a call girl and helped her murder Mr. Boddy and the cook. Miss Scarlet killed the rest of the victims herself. But, she’s busted: Wadsworth secretly works for the FBI and reveals himself just as the police show up to escort her to jail.

• Ending B: The killer? Mrs. Peacock, who single-handedly killed everyone. Again, Wadsworth the FBI agent busts her, and although she escapes by holding the survivors at gunpoint, the police are waiting when she gets outside.

• Ending C, my personal favorite: The killer? Everyone. But Wadsworth isn’t Wadsworth – he’s really Mr. Boddy. The man everyone thought to be Mr. Boddy (you know, the corpse) was actually the butler. Wadsworth had been working with each of these people in his extortion scheme and figured they would all kill each other off if given the right circumstances, and they did… except for Mr. Green, who is the undercover FBI agent this time, and he kills Wadsworth and has the rest of the guests arrested.

• Ending D, which was scripted and shot but never released: Wadsworth admits that he killed Mr. Boddy, and now he has killed all of them, too: he poisoned everyone. Except the police show up and disarm Wadsworth, who then goes through the whole exhausting confession that he already gave to the guests, running around the house and reenacting the whole scenario. When he tells the part about meeting Col. Mustard at the front door, he steps outside and locks everyone in, then makes off in the police car… except there’s an angry German Shepard in the back seat.


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29 comments to "Movie Trivia: Clue"

  1. endgame47
    April 27th, 2009 at 5:55 pm

    BEST MOVIE EVER! Madeline Kahn is a genius.

  2. Sean D. Freuduh
    April 27th, 2009 at 6:24 pm

    Let's not forget to mention that Mr. Boddy was played by Lee Ving, the lead singer of the oft-overlooked punk band Fear.

  3. jwlash
    April 27th, 2009 at 6:51 pm

    I love that movie. It's one DVD I don't have. I need to rectify that!

  4. seefish3
    April 27th, 2009 at 7:24 pm

    I'd forgotten about this, which is odd, considering my Leslie Ann Warren fetish (caused by seeing her "Cinderella" at an impressionable age). Netflix, here I come!

    Yeah, and thanks for giving away the ending(s)!
    Hey, the hot chick in "The Crying Game" is a dude. So there! (Strangely, I didn't mind...but couldn't he do better than Forest Whitaker?)

  5. Woogie
    April 27th, 2009 at 7:41 pm

    The endings are irrelevant really, and you could easily have avoided them as it made it clear in the article they were there. DUH! Your fault you read them.

    Funny as hell movie. Hopefully if they're doing a remake, the original will get a better DVD release as it's fairly crap.

    Several notable idiots, in particular Kevin Smith, hate the film. Which is a big part of why I'm going off old Silent Bob. (That and his increasingly "phone it in" level of commitment to things.)

  6. bearfoot
    April 27th, 2009 at 9:31 pm

    I'm a geek so I have to say this.

    Magic: the Gathering isn't a board game.

    other than that neat article!

  7. Tonberry2k
    April 27th, 2009 at 9:44 pm

    One of my favorite movies. So much so that I already knew all this trivia, haha.

  8. DaveL
    April 27th, 2009 at 10:01 pm

    It was Miss Cellania on the beer boat with the crochet dynamite.

  9. rougy
    April 27th, 2009 at 10:35 pm

    Netflixed!

  10. cameron
    April 28th, 2009 at 12:30 am

    "And you'd had a letter, and you'd had a letter, and you'd had a letter..."

  11. Woogie
    April 28th, 2009 at 1:01 am

    "What do you do?"
    "I butle, sir."

    Line slays me every time.

  12. Sergio
    April 28th, 2009 at 1:51 am

    I've lost count of how many times I've seen this movie since it came out (when I was 8), but it is literally over 100 times. I recently watched it and I still love it dearly. If they do a remake they should get Parker Posey to play Mrs. White

  13. GQ
    April 28th, 2009 at 4:38 am

    So does the DVD not show the movie the same way the VHS did, with all three endings? Or am I remebering it wrong? Been years since I've seen it.

    "Ok, that's how it could have happened, but how about this?"

  14. feeling_madness
    April 28th, 2009 at 7:06 am

    I was going to say something similar to GQ - I remember seeing the movie with all three endings included in it. I know I didn't see it in the theater (as far as I remember), but I do know my grandparents had a VHS copy, and I watched it on TV several times, and each ending was shown. The first one was shown and then a caption read something like, "That's how it could have happened.." and then showed the next one and then the captions said, "But this is how it really happened," indicating the last one was the true ending.
    I never knew that they showed the three different endings at the theater. That's pretty neat!

  15. OddNumber
    April 28th, 2009 at 8:00 am

    That's a great marketing strategy to show only one ending in the theater at a time so that moviegoers might make the trip back for a second and third time. Let's hope they don't do that with the remake with the crazy ticket and concession stand prices!

    One of my favorite movies as a kid, and still great. Tim Curry is hilarious!

  16. TBV
    April 28th, 2009 at 8:21 am

    Communism was just a red herring!

    Just watched it this past weekend. LOVE IT. Everyone at the top of their comedic game.

  17. Dayna
    April 28th, 2009 at 8:50 am

    'flames...flames on the side of my face...burning..' I LOVE MRS WHITE!!! that movie is one of the best EVAR!

  18. Knickers Down Dean
    April 28th, 2009 at 9:25 am

    And lets not forget who played Mr. Boddy....Seminal L.A. punk legend Lee Ving from the band Fear.

  19. Babycakes
    April 28th, 2009 at 10:09 am

    Even if you didn't mean to pick another 80s flick for trivia... you picked a great flick! :D I love Tim Curry's acting and heck, he's hot.

  20. Reechard
    April 28th, 2009 at 6:42 pm

    OddNumber- I believe they did that with 28 Days Later but I'm not entirely sure.

    Little known fact about this movie: it's the cause of my thing for maids

  21. Rob Merritt
    April 28th, 2009 at 10:10 pm

    Kevin Smith hates this movie??? That proves it, he isn't human.

  22. Video Game Dork
    April 29th, 2009 at 12:09 am

    "oh, Communism is nothing but a red herring!"

  23. Kevin
    April 30th, 2009 at 11:37 am

    U should totally do Spaceballs next week

  24. rainbodragon
    April 30th, 2009 at 12:38 pm

    if they shot the 4th ending, isnt there anyway to see it, like a special dvd or something?

  25. classickk
    April 30th, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    Where can I find that fourth ending?!

  26. Mrs White
    May 1st, 2009 at 11:06 pm

    "FLAMES. flames. BURNING flames" "Flames BURNING" "FLAMES" "BURNING FLAMES" god damn funny

  27. clue fanatic
    May 2nd, 2009 at 3:05 pm

    Another bit of trivia: there was a mistake! In the third ending, Yvette was killed by Mrs. White. Not possible, seeing as Mrs. White was screaming in a room upstairs whenever Yvette sneaks downstairs.

    Mr. Green says "I didn't do it!" like eight times

  28. Clue Fan
    September 6th, 2009 at 11:20 am

    Another mistake! When Mr. Boddy first turned out the lights, the room was submerged into blackness. Yet, the fire blazing in the corner would have provided enough light for everyone to see what was going on.

    Mrs. Peacock is so funny in this movie. Remember:

    Peacock: Go away!

    Chief: But your souls are in danger!

    Peacock: Our lives are in danger, you beatnik!

  29. Free PC Clue game download
    September 9th, 2009 at 6:26 pm

    I watched the Clue movie again recently. It's very funny and ridiculous! Especially Tim Curry.


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