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From: showard@udenva.UUCP (showard)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: Re: The movie "Clue"--Three endings?
Message-ID: <1003@udenva.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Dec-85 14:59:37 EST
Article-I.D.: udenva.1003
Posted: Mon Dec 30 14:59:37 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 31-Dec-85 18:44:32 EST
References: <823@h-sc1.UUCP> <5500008@hpcnoe.UUCP>
Reply-To: showard@udenva.UUCP ()
Organization: U of Denver
Lines: 26
Summary: 

In article <5500008@hpcnoe.UUCP> jeff@hpcnoe.UUCP writes:
>Re:  Different endings to clue.
>
>At first I thought this was an interesting gimmick.  But, on second thought,
>why would anyone see a whodunit when there is n possible outcomes?  Part
>of the fun of a whodunit is to be able to guess whodunit.  But if there is
>multiple endings (and I assume different murderers), why bother?
>
>-- Jeff Wu
      
   Maybe I'm reading more into the movie than is there (I saw ending "A" last
week and enjoyed it) but it seems to me that Lynn and Landis were parodying the
"classic" whodunnit genre, especially as done in the cinema of the '40s and 
'50s.  In those films, the endings often (some say usually) were unpredictable
and completely arbitrary.  In a good whodunnit, you can pick up the clues on a
second viewing and say "Oh, of course!"  In a hack whodunnit (the kind Clue was
parodying) you can't do that because the ending is artificially "tacked on."  
What better way to drive that point home than to actually tack on three com-
pletely different endings?

   In passing, did anyone else notice that the two songs played in the movie 
"Shake, Rattle, and Roll" and "Sh-Boom (Life Could Be a Dream)" had not yet
been recorded in 1954?   I didn't notice any other anachronisms, so was this
just a Landis-like gag?

--Blore