By Lia
Perhaps one distinction between the boundaries of the detective story as a game and a more narrative literary or cinematic structure is the emphasis on the criminal psychology as well as the puzzle, leading to the most important question: Why? Games and puzzles often have limited descriptions of the setting and background leading into what you are playing, basically enough of a why to make pursuing the solution worthwhile. But, by nature of iterative gameplay, it is difficult to change the outcome each time, keep audiences engaged and willing to play multiple times, and construct a narrative that works for every situation, which includes crucial plot points like motive. Games and narrative fiction have different strategies to keep audiences engaged and coming back to the media object. Namely, games have set rules with enough iteration for varying physical gameplay experiences per situation, thus not needing much plot, and films/literature have more narrative depth, so the emotional impact varies among viewings, creating interest in the set story. The Clue film does a great job of adapting the board game’s whimsical premise and style of deduction while also adding necessary details to make detective fiction satisfying—the impactful Why? behind the repetitive puzzle.
Clue is one of my favorite murder mystery media objects because it has all the classic tropes of the mystery genre: personal deduction, a closed-room drama, a seemingly impossible murder, but also playfulness that takes the edge off of intense violent crime. Clue (1985) especially brings out this whimsy with its well-portrayed archetypal characters, owing to those of the board game and falling in line with Sayers future prediction of “credible and lively [characters]; not conventional, but, on the other hand, not too profoundly studied-people who live more or less on the Punch level of emotion,” further compounded with the slapstick humor that ensues as they attempt to solve the murder of Mr. Boddy (105). The overall film captures the essence of the gameplay for the Clue board game, with each character wandering around the manor, picking up suspected murder weapons, eyeing suspects, and navigating secret passages to solve the dinner party murder mystery. However, because it is a narrative film, Clue (1985) must go beyond the limited gameplay information, extending the plotline to explain why all the characters are here, what their motives may be, and how they could have accomplished such a feat.
Firstly, Clue (1985) flushes out the background, staying true to the game and bringing out the mystery aspects of the genre. The game already has all the elements of a closed-room who-dun-it but lacks the explicit Why? So, the first thing the film addresses after introducing the characters/suspects is why they are all at this dinner party, claiming they are being blackmailed by their host with political secrets within DC. Now each character has a valid motive for the murder, adding to the drama of being a suspect. The film also includes other characters, the butler, maid, and chef, as suspects, at least until they are killed, which is equally as likely in a mystery story but left out of the game. This adds further believable complexity to the mystery of equally shared guilt and clears up inconsistencies such as how one person could accomplish so many murders, like in the Ms. Scarlet ending where Yvette helps. Then, in the spirit of the game, a player announces that they have solved the case, once again laying out the who, what, and where, but also, more importantly, the how and why. Most interestingly, like the game, there are multiple endings. Current viewing options show all filmed endings, but the original intention had different endings shown depending on the theater. So while you may have sneaking suspicions from the beginning or think you already know the answer because it’s like something else you’ve already seen, heard, or read, they flip expectations within the know the structure with the possibility of a different permutation every time. Maybe the formula gets repetitive, but the thrill of solving the mystery is always there, like the game.
Narratively, the game has some holes that cannot be resolved due to the gameplay, which makes the farce a great way to handle the more ridiculous game points in a satisfying way. For example, if they know there is a murder because they found the body, it is absurd and illogical to keep open the idea that the victim could have been killed in any room with any weapon, especially since blunt force trauma looks dramatically different from gunshot or stab wounds and the body would have been found in or close to that room. The farce gets past this by creating even more absurd events to cover up the game’s issues, like Yvette screaming to bring everyone to the other room, so Mr. Boddy’s location actually becomes a mystery. Another anomaly is the killer should know if they murdered Mr. Boddy, which would factor into how they reveal clues toward the group goal of solving the murder. It is odd and unexplained why, even if your character did it, you have to find out through play, just like everyone else, that it was you. As Haycraft notes for detective stories, “the culprit ‘must not be any one whose thoughts the reader has been permitted to follow,’ ” which makes sense because then the reader would know the culprit before the solution is revealed. The board game attempts to avoid this by making the conclusion random, but it also comes at odds with this notion because the player sometimes falls into the paradox of not knowing they are the culprit while essentially being their mind. The film clears this up by not having the audience as a character within the story but as an observer. The equal opportunity for every suspect, weapon, and room to be involved in the crime is a great concept that could lead to creating fun ideas about why Mrs. Peacock’s weapon of choice is a lead pipe that somehow ended up in the ballroom, but placing the game into the real, logical world loses some of its believability without the farce to explain away ridiculousness. Thus, while the film should go beyond the scope of the gameplay to craft a more flushed-out narrative, it is also successful in bringing the proper spirit of the game with its questioning and over exaggeration of tropes through comedy.
While Sayers claims the mystery genre comes from horror and deduction, Clue takes a much different approach than Edgar Allen Poe or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by leaning into comedy. The film is not afraid to make fun of itself in the tropes and general ridiculousness of the premise, which, to an audience, is refreshing and fitting instead of a dark, twisted mystery. If one stops to think, it is hilarious that the corpse was purposefully named Mr. Boddy before he died, and that everyone else has an equally odd pseudonym. The film brushes away the game’s inconsistencies with emotive satisfaction through comedy and the Why, bringing life into a game about murder. That is what the mystery genre does, it creates an adventure with conclusions that reach beyond the finality of death.
Intermittent Mechanism 