The Red Herring Exposed - A Clue Analysis (PART 5)

THE FOURTH MURDER - THE STRANDED MOTORIST

The Situation:

By this point, Mr. Boddy has been killed again and there has been a small panic in the hallway before they bring all the bodies into the study for safekeeping. After a short discussion that reveals that weapons are all over the place, Wadsworth suggests that all the weapons be locked up in the cabinet. As they open the front door to throw away the weapon key, the Stranded Motorist appears looking to use the phone. After some discussion, the group invites him inside to use the phone in the lounge. They key then gets thrown away.

The Murder:

This is where we see the first concrete evidence of a murder plot. Recognizing the motorist, Col. Mustard then interrogates Wadsworth to see if there is anyone else in the house. Under the pretense of verifying that the house is empty, Mustard hatches the plan to split up and search the house in pairs. Clearly,  Mustard has already made the decision to kill of the person informing on him. 

There hand of fate is firmly on the scale against the Motorist at this point. By blind luck of the draw, Mustard, paired with Scarlett, draw the stick that places them on the main level with the motorist. We see the various pairs searching but the Mustard pair is the only one that matters. First they check the billiard room. Then they check the hall closet. Aggressively. When they get to the piano room(?) Mustard leaves Scarlett to go "search the kitchen". Now that they are separated, Mustard goes to the study and burns the evidence, retrieves the wrench and kills the Motorist.The next time we see Scarlett, she and Mustard have reunited in the Conservatory where Mustard "finds" the secret passage to the lounge. He breaks character and volunteers to go first, knowing that there is no danger because he already killed the Motorist using the same passage. At no other point does Mustard display the willingness to risk himself into the unknown. The screaming of Ms. Scarlett brings the others back to the main level, Wadsworth tries to break down the door, Yvette ends up shooting the lock and the chandelier falls, shatters and the Off Duty Policeman arrives. The secret passage is revealed to all.

The logistics of the murder make some sense I suppose. Col. Mustard splitting from Scarlett should have been a huge red flag but then again, White and Wadsworth separated as well and didn't think it was odd so who knows. The only real question is whether or not Mustard had enough time to do all the things he did. When he claimed to go to the kitchen he actually returned to the study, gathered up the evidence, threw it in the fire, unlocked the cabinet, got a weapon, ran to the Conservatory to use the secret passage, enter the lounge, kill the Motorist, return to the conservatory and then go back down the hall to where Ms. Scarlett is, in such a way that looks convincingly like he is returning from the kitchen. During this whole time frame, Ms. Scarlett is . . . . . . looking behind a curtain. I don't think there is any way Mustard could have done all that in the appropriate time frame but a little leeway should be given I suppose for movie magic.

Wadsworth on the other hand has completely lost control of his master plan. He invited the motorist to the house but after that he was out of the picture entirely. Not only did the drawing of straws put him upstairs with another known killer (Ms. White), he himself has led the charge to lock up all the weapons in the cabinet. Maybe Wadsworth could have guessed that the former soldier in Col. Mustard would try and kill the Motorist but that doesn't explain why Wadsworth would actively make it harder to do so.

And finally we come to the Motorist himself. What exactly was the plan? Like the fake Mr. Boddy, the motorist was invited by Wadsworth and given the role of the Stranded Motorist to play. We know this is so because if he was in fact a stranded motorist, there would have been no reason to pretend he didn't recognize anyone who answered the door. He would have just asked his co-conspirator Wadsworth to use the phone. So we have to assume that everything that the Motorist did was under order from Wadsworth, which begs the question as to what he was doing. Why on earth did the Motorist call anybody and why was he still performing the confused stranger surrounded by weirdos routine on the phone? Wadsworth went to great lengths to make sure all his accomplices and victims were gathered under one roof. Why would Wadsworth have instructed the Motorist to involve an outsider in the operation? It makes no sense. As we shall see again, the only reason the Motorist needed to make a call was because the script needed to distract him from his own impending murder. There is no in-movie logic that explains it otherwise. The only guess I could come up with is that the Motorist came to the house as Wadsworth instructed but then quickly sussed out the fact that something was off. But if that was the case, he would have been calling for help to arrive quickly, not meandering around the fact that his old boss was at a weird dinner party. The Motorist, Like Mr. Boddy and later the Policeman, is caught in the loop of acting in such a way that their actions only make sense if they are in fact their characters and not accomplices putting on a show. Which is of course impossible. There was also no reason to actually wreck his car if Wadsworth simply invited him to the house. He could have pretended to be a Stranded Motorist without actually leaving a bunch of evidence on the road.

Aside from all that, the actual footage in the movie fails to address one last fact vital to this murder. How exactly did Col. Mustard know about the secret passage? We know that's how he killed the Motorist because we actually saw it in the third ending but we aren't given that bit of information. There are only two scenarios given that explains how people know about the passage. The first is from Wadsworth who says that the house is a friends and that he's known all along. There's no reason why Wadsworth would have told Col. Mustard about the passage. The second way is through Yvette. In the first ending Wadsworth explains that Yvette told Scarlett about the passage so she could kill people. That doesn't begin to answer why Yvette would know about the passage at all, she wasn't a full time maid at the house or anything, and it also doesn't explain why Yvette would tell Col. Mustard. Yvette is getting paid to inform on Col. Mustard, why would she help him destroy the evidence of their affair? That would upset both Mr. Boddy and Ms. Scarlett as they both have dirt on Mustard. The only reason I could think of is that Yvette wanted the photos destroyed as well because she was in them but Wadsworth made it seem like Yvette did that sort of thing regularly for Ms. Scarlett. Destroying one set of photos probably wouldn't matter much in the final analysis.

Conclusion:

The logistics of the murder work fine but the timing in its execution are suspect, as are the behaviors of the Stranded Motorist and Wadsworth. By this point, the movie is relying on the novelty of the multiple endings plus the manic energy of Wadsworth's explanations to conceal the nonsensical parts of the plot that become apparent on repeat viewings. And for the most part its effective. By the time you get to the final ending you kind of confuse whats happened in which ending and whats actually real. It makes the proposed solution seem logical.

Up Next:

Murder #5, the Off-Duty Policeman. One of the funnier scenes in the movie and again, some of its least logical.

Recap:
Wadsworth: 0 murders
Peacock: 1 murder
Green: 0 murders
White: 0 murders
Mustard: 1 murders
Scarlett: 0 murders
Plum: 1 murder

Mr. Boddy: dead
The Cook: dead
Yvette: alive
Stranded Motorist: dead
Off Duty Cop: investigating the Stranded Motorist's car
Singing Telegram Girl: not arrived

53rd Academy Awards

My series reviewing the Oscars of my lifetime continues.
The 53rd Academy Awards. April 14, 1980
Hosted By Johnny Carson
Delayed a day due to the attempted assassination of President Reagan

Nominees:
Ordinary People - Yikes, there is a lot going on here and most of it looks terrible. I had only ever heard of this movie but never seen or read anything about it. From what I can tell, a kid is depressed, possibly suicidal, stemming from an incident on a boat where it looks like someone drowns. This scenario apparently makes Mary Tyler Moore hate the kid (her son) and fight constantly with Donald Sutherland (husband). This might be a generational thing but I don't understand what the central conflict is. Mary Tyler Moore just looks like a monster who hates her kid for being traumatized. Besides, why is she fighting with Donald Sutherland? Has she not met Keifer? He's a great dad! Let him do his thing. I will never watch this.

The Coal Miner's Daughter - "Winters Bone - The Musical!" Egads, where to start. A biopic of Loretta Lynn apparently, of whom I know little and care less. This movie looks like the Alpha and Omega of country music stories. It has everything; troubling young romances, Grand Old Opry, coal mining, alcoholism, adultry, spousal abuse, Kentucky, etc. It does seem to have some top notch Tommy Lee Jones but I've never seen this movie, you've never seen this movie and yet either one of us could write it tomorrow. It also seems like the longest movie ever made but I can't and won't verify that by watching it.

The Elephant Man - David Lynch makes an appearance directing this heartwarming tale of John Merrick, the severely disfigured elephant man. I actually saw this movie as a kid, I think with my Dad somehow, maybe on TV, and all I really remember was the ending and how utterly overcome I was by sadness. It is awful to watch and few things have made me feel as bad as I did at the end of this movie. On the other hand, I've heard nine million people do some variation of "I am not an animal! I am a human being!" So I guess things evened out. I wonder if one director has been nominated for three movies as odd as The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive.

Raging Bull - Finally, something right in my wheelhouse. Scorcese, DeNiro, Boxing! This a truly great movie but make no mistake, it is a painful couple of hours. LaMotta is a beast of man and watching him destroy (literally) everyone and everything in his life is tough to look at sometimes. DeNiro is just too awesome to ignore although every time I watch it I get more convinced he actually knocked out Cathy Moriarty.

Tess - Roman Polanski is a sexual predator and so is the guy who edited and/or did the voiceover for this trailer. As best I can tell, the plot of this movie revolves around the main points that 1) Nastassja Kinski is attractive and 2) She agreed to be in this movie. There's not much else going on here. There is a thread bare pretense of a story involving a poor farm girl being snatched away by ruthless rich guys which I assume has all the depth and character of a Penthouse letter of the month. There's something going on with the church because of course there is and somebody's past comes back to haunt them anew. Delightful. Oddly enough, for as shallow as I assume this movie to be, the vibe I get from it is more Barry Lyndon than Silk Stalkings. Make of that what you will but rest assured that I do not mean it as a compliment. I'll never watch this but I think I can safely set the over/under on rapes in this movie at 2.5 and 5.5 for the number of nude scenes.

The Outcome:
Ordinary People wins which I guess is ok. Tess or the Coal Miner's Daughter would have been a travesty and The Elephant Man was probably too weird and Lynchian to win. I'm guessing that when the Academy had to vote, Raging Bull was just too unpleasant to get enough votes and DeNiro winning was the best they could hope for. Besides, Ordinary People has that same kind of "Important Movie" vibe that a movie like Scent of a Woman or Dead Poets Society has and those kinds of movies do well come awards time. I would've voted Raging Bull or Elephant Man and refused to watch the others on principle.

Extra Fun Facts:
Did you know that whenever I saw the movie title Tess I immediately confused it with Nell, the Jodie Foster feral cabin woman movie? Quite a mix up indeed!

This years Academy Awards also missed out on the chance to dump The Coal Miner's Daughter and Tess and nominate Altered States and Brubaker instead. Make that change and suddenly you've got a powerhouse year on your hands!

(not pictured; Nastassja Kinski in Tess)

The Red Herring Exposed - A Clue Analysis (PART 4)

THE THIRD MURDER - MR. BODDY REDUX

The Situation:
The successful attempt on Mr. Boddy occurs when the group runs to the kitchen to check on the Cook. At this point the Cook is already dead, stabbed by Mrs. Peacock, but the group doesn't know it yet. They only think to check on her after returning to the study and discussing who is in the house and what could possibly be going on.

The Murder:
It's at this point in the movie where the multiple endings and edits starts to cause trouble with the on-screen logic of these murders. It's important to remember just how the three endings are presented. The first fake ending (Scarlett ending) shows every killing, start to finish. The Second fake ending and the Third True ending don't rehash the the murder of Mr. Boddy or the Cook, they simply start with the series of murders that commenced with the Stranded Motorist. The problem though is that the stated explanation for this murder doesn't match up with the film.

There are three scenarios presented as to who killed Mr. Boddy the second time. In the first ending it was Yvette, who hid in the study, waited for the group to leave, then killed Mr. Boddy as he tried to escape. The second ending shows Mrs. Peacock going from the kitchen to the study via secret passage in the commotion surrounding the cooks death to finish off Mr. Boddy. The supposed true ending though only states that Prof. Plum did the killing without showing it. The only clue as to how he did it is when someone else exclaims that Plum "Wasn't in the kitchen when the cook was found!" This is the smoking gun that implicates Prof. Plum and he readily admits that he did it after Wadsworth exposes himself as the real Mr. Boddy. "Then who did I kill? My butler. Aw shucks!"

The video we are shown though supports all three versions of the killing and by doing so, undercuts them all. When the gang runs to the kitchen, Yvette does not go with them. She never appears in the kitchen and no mention of her is ever made. Presumably she is sitting in the study with the faking death Mr. Boddy the entire time. Yet we know she didn't do the killing. Professor Plum and Mrs. Peacock on the other hand, do run with the group to the kitchen. When the group is looking for the cook, who is about to fall out of the freezer, Plum and Peacock are clearly behind Wadsworth, fully in the kitchen looking around for the cook. Oddly enough, once the dead cook falls, Plum and Peacock disappear from the scene. They have no lines during the whole thing, they simply vanish. That is, until Wadsworth declares that they should bring the cook to the study to keep the kitchen tidy, then Plum and Peacock reappear to the scene, behind Wadsworth again where they were at the beginning of the scene. This positioning is problematic. We are presented with two possible ways the killer was able to get the drop on Mr. Boddy the second time. The first one is that someone stayed in the study, hid, and killed Boddy when he got up. The second is that someone used the secret passage when everyone had their backs to the freezer when the cook fell. This is a problem though because we can see that angle for the duration of the cook falling scene. Plum and Peacock never go near the freezer and therefore couldn't have used the secret passage. Its conceivable that Prof. Plum simply backed out of the kitchen, as he was close to the door in the shots where we can see him, and ran back to the study to kill Mr. Boddy. The problem with that scenario, and really the secret passage scenario as well, is that if Plum returned to the study either way, he would've found Yvette there waiting in the study. Are we really to believe that Prof. Plum would've murdered Mr. Boddy right in front of Yvette? We know from the rest of the movie the Yvette was eventually murdered by Ms. White and that Prof. Plum had no interaction with Yvette during the movie. Had Plum killed Mr. Boddy and then attacked Yvette to remove a witness, that might make some sense but Plum doesn't even try to kill the Singing Telegram Girl, who is informing on him, so it seems unlikely that he would kill in front of witnesses with the idea that he could just kill that person later.

Conclusion:
As presented, this murder doesn't make sense. Prof. Plum simply could not have killed Mr. Boddy at that time in the manner explained. He was in the kitchen with the rest of the group, didn't use the secret passage and there was a witness in the study anyway. I suspect that when editing this movie, there was three shots of the scene where the Cook was found dead. One where each of the three proposed killers (Yvette, Peacock and Plum) was missing. The problem is that they showed us the "Yvette was missing" ending in the first fake ending but then didn't ever show us the scene where Plum was missing from (and Yvette and Peacock were present in) the kitchen. Without showing us that scene they're simply too many killers in the study when the murder happens and it can't be reconciled. A bad edit as opposed to a a bad plot though.

Up Next:
After Mr. Boddy is really killed, we enter into the logic stretching string of informant murders that begins with Murder #4 - the Stranded Motorist. We again have to delve into the murky waters of character motivation and behavior.

Recap:
Wadsworth: 0 murders
Peacock: 1 murder
Green: 0 murders
White: 0 murders
Mustard: 0 murders
Scarlett: 0 murders
Plum: 1 murder

Mr. Boddy: dead
The Cook: dead
Yvette: alive
Stranded Motorist: not arrived
Off Duty Cop: not arrived
Singing Telegram Girl: not arrived

The Red Herring Exposed - A Clue Analysis (PART 3)

THE SECOND MURDER - THE COOK

The Situation:
The series of events that lead to the murder of the cook begin towards the end of the hijinks following the supposed death of Mr. Boddy in murder #1. The investigation into what killed Mr. Boddy eventually focused on the cognac and the possibility that it was poisoned. Mrs. Peacock, hysterical from fear due to her also drinking the cognac, begins screaming and is laid out by Mr. Green. Yvette then begins to scream in the billiard room, having perhaps drunk the poison cognac she learned about listening to and recording the conversation in the study.

The Murder:
When Yvette begins to scream the full cast races out of the study and into the billiards room where Yvette is. Mrs. Peacock is the last person to leave the study and has disappeared by the time the gang arrives at the billiard room. When the gang returns with to the study with Yvette, Mrs. Peacock is back with the group and is actually the first one to return to the study. To have enough time to commit the murder Mrs. Peacock must have already grabbed the knife when the whole gang left the study to go to Yvette. She then continued on to the kitchen while the main group was knocking on the billiard room door and stabbed the cook and stuffed her in the freezer. She must have been moving quick though. We get the explanation that the reason nobody heard the cook scream was that Yvettes screaming covered it up. Yvette quit screaming though pretty much as soon as the group got there and we actually see Mrs. Peacock slide behind everyone as they approach the billiard room door so there isn't much time to get further down the hall and do some stabbing. Once the killing was done though, Peacock would have plenty of time to get back to the group because they spent quite a bit of time in the billiard room talking to Yvette. The first ending suggests that the killer returned to the study using the secret passage but there is no evidence of that and there was also no need. Once the murder was over she could just get back to the group, there was time for that. We also see what appears to be Mrs. Peacock entering the study at the front of the group coming in, not already there having gone through the secret passage.

Conclusion:
This murder is actually wrapped up pretty nicely. The cook has almost no speaking lines or memorable actions in the entire film so we don't have to worry about the issue of character motivation that is going to plague so many of the other minor characters. The only questionable issue is whether or not it's believable that Mrs. Peacock could have committed the murder quickly enough to mask the screams but we don't actually have any evidence the cook did any screaming so ultimately, who cares. Mrs. Peacock's reasoning and calculations are spot on though. To the best of her knowledge, Mr. Boddy has just been murdered by one of the other guests. She correctly realizes that the Cook is the last one left that can affirmatively incriminate her for taking bribes. The other guests and Wadsworth know about it of course but they only have hearsay knowledge so that isn't much of a threat. They also have their own secrets and problems being implicated in the murder of Mr. Boddy and the Cook, so exposing Peacocks secrets probably aren't high on their list of priorities. Had Mr. Boddy actually been Mr. Boddy, Mrs. Peacock could've solved all her problems in the first 30 minutes of the movie.

This is another example of dumb luck for Wadsworth. He did nothing to instigate the actions that led to the cooks death. The fortuitous murder was simply the result of Mrs. Peacock being a murderer and the coincidence that she happened to be drinking cognac when Professor Plum opined that the death of Mr. Boddy could be poison by cognac. Without both things happening simultaneously with the covering noise of Yvette screaming and its difficult to see Mrs. Peacock getting a chance to murder The Cook, a woman quite a bit younger and more physically imposing than our Senators wife. We are now up to 2 murders that were executed simply because Wadsworth apparently has a galaxy level brain understanding of the true nature of his guests and their morals. It should be noted though that as the group went to see Yvette, Wadsworth was the last one to reach the billiards room, aside from Mrs. Peacock. When Peacock actually slides past the group to continue on to the kitchen, she actually brushes past Wadsworth who kind of glances around before going into the billiard room. It's entirely probably that Wadsworth knew at the time what exactly was going on.

The only interesting thing to consider here is whether or not Yvette screaming was an intentional distraction ordered by Wadsworth. She doesn't seem to react to the commotion surrounding the gunshot attempt on Mr. Boddy but does for the possibly poisoned cognac? We do see her drinking the cognac at one point but we also see her serve all of the cognac being drunk at the time. If Mr. Boddy had been poisoned either she would have been the one to do it or the poison would have been added to his drink after it had been served. There's no real way Yvette could have been affected by a poisoned bottle of cognac since she was in more control of it than anyone. Additionally, she seemed to be drinking the cognac from the billiards room, not the study. Either way, if Wadsworth told her to scream to create chaos and some kind of opening for Mr. Boddy to escape and/or give someone else an opportunity to kill, he didn't take it and it was only dumb luck that another guest decided to kill someone. Neither scenario makes much sense but the whole screaming episode allowed there to be a time gap for somebody to commit a murder, to keep the plot moving, and it reminded all of us that Yvette was in the movie and was going to become a more major character than the cook or Mr. Boddy.

Up Next:
Murder #3, the actual murder of Mr. Boddy which happens nearly simultaneously with the murder of The Cook. This is also where the editing or the plotting starts to get off the rails a little bit.

Recap:
Wadsworth: 0 murders
Peacock: 1 murder
Green: 0 murders
White: 0 murders
Mustard: 0 murders
Scarlett: 0 murders
Plum: 1 attempted murder

Mr. Boddy: faking death
The Cook: dead
Yvette: alive
Stranded Motorist: not arrived
Off Duty Cop: not arrived
Singing Telegram Girl: not arrived