dvr this
Turner Classic Movies, 8:15 p.m., May 18
I don’t think Murder by Death is as good as the similarly themed Clue – both of them are parodies of the 1970s Agatha Christie murder mysteries – but it is still great fun.
Written by Neil Simon, the film’s conceit is that a rich madman (the ur-queen Truman Capote) invites the world’s greatest detectives for dinner and a murder mystery. The detectives are all versions of Miss Marple (Jessica Marbles, played by Elsa Lanchester), Charlie Chan (Lionel Wang, played with racist absurdity by Peter Sellers), Sam Spade (Sam Diamond, played by Columbo’s Peter Falk), and others, and the humor is certainly helped along if you know the quirks these great actors are mocking.
The movie is a romp of slapstick and hamming, and it’s great fun.
