The Red Herring Exposed - A Clue Analysis (Part 11)

 Loose Thread #2 - The call from J. Edgar Hoover

A bizarre aspect of the movie that is ignored by everyone in the movie.

What we are told: Prior to the surge killing of the Cop, Singing Telegram Girl and Yvette a call from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is answered by the off-duty cop right before he makes his own call for help.

What we find out: It was a fact a call from J. Edgar Hoover and it was intended for his undercover Agent, Mr. Green.

This entire element of the movie makes no sense, regardless of the ending. In the two false endings, Wadsworth is the undercover Agent trying to catch the blackmailer and killer. The call from Hoover comes and the Cop answers it and Wadsworth answers it as a representative of the house. All we see is after the call a slightly exasperated Wadsworth take a deep breath, then move on. If the call was for Wadsworth I suppose there could be a reason for Hoover to call with the expectation that Wadsworth would answer the phone, being the butler and all. But once the Cop answered why on Earth would Hoover just continue on and tell the Cop who he really was? No reason.

In the true ending it makes even less sense. Mr. Green is undercover and not in control of the household. Why on Earth would Hoover need to tell him something so badly that he would do it right in the middle of a sting operation where there is very little chance that Green would be able to answer the phone? There is no reason and the movie provides none. Green doesn't get the call and doesn't mention it again until he tells everyone at the end it was for him, in case his badge and gun wasn't enough to convince them he was an undercover Agent.

The call only really serves one function and that is to let the people watching the movie that something is not as it seems. Which we already knew due to the spy, blackmail, Boddy reveals. But I suppose this lets us in to the fact that there is a law enforcement element involved that we may not be hip to yet. The problem though is that while we get that info and do whatever with it, the people in the movie react to it in no way whatsoever. In the true ending, a call from Hoover should have immediately clued Wadsworth/Boddy into the fact that one of the guests was an undercover agent of some kind, or at least working with the Feds. Given that moments later Yvette is killed by White, the Cop by Scarlett and the Singing Telegram Girl by Wadsworth himself, the fact that Green is the only person in the house who hasn't killed anyone yet should have been proof positive that he was the mole. Frankly, Wadsworth should have known that already since all the guests had their informant in the house, besides Green. Wadsworth had the gun and the element of surprise and already had a house full of people being blackmailed who all just killed someone. He could have done anything with Green and pinned it on them. Or hid him in the basement. Or just fled. Anything. We don't know what the conversation was like between Wadsworth and Hoover but its impossible to imagine anything that could have been said that would have eased Wadsworth's mind. Wadsworth reacts by just doing . . . . . . . nothing. Nothing at all. 

Even if you were inclined to believe that the Hoover call was a missed edit from one of the fake endings, the same logic applies. If Wadsworth was the undercover Agent and Peacock or Scarlett was the killer, the fact that the Cop announces to everyone that Hoover was calling the house would have clued the killer into the scam immediately. What actions that would have caused we can't say but it wouldn't have just been ignored. I think it likely that it would have made Wadsworth an immediate target since all the blackmail victims had proven that they would not have worked with the Feds and the whole operation was being orchestrated by Wadsworth. This whole business with the call was for the audience only.

Up next: The final part, the Beatnik Preacher loose thread

The Red Herring Exposed - A Clue Analysis (Part 10)

Loose Thread #1 - Who is Mr. Green?

One of the stranger aspects of the movie that gets lost in the shuffle of multiple endings and slightly different scenes is the true circumstances of our hero, Mr. Green.

What we are told: Green is a State Department employee that is being blackmailed because he is secretly gay and would lose his top secret clearance, and job, if it was exposed.

What we find out: He's a gun toting, super macho, married FBI Agent working to bring down Mr. Boddy and his ring of informants.

This setup doesn't make much sense. If we accept the scenario at face value, one of Mr. Boddy's spies (Yvette, the Cook, Cop, Butler, etc.) found out that Mr. Green was gay, got enough incriminating evidence on him that it would allow for blackmail, then informed Mr. Boddy who initiated the long term blackmail. But how could that happen? To get ironclad enough evidence to blackmail someone, you would think visual proof, probably photographic but maybe a honeypot scenario, would be needed. If Green is straight then that didn't happen. Secondly, how does Green impersonate a State Department agent if he works for the FBI? Presumably the evidence against Green would have been collected before he was aware it was happening, he would have had no reason to believe he needed an undercover job at the State Department to cover his FBI roots.

One scenario that seems to be hinted at in the film is that maybe Green is a stand in. When Wadsworth is answering doors he says something to the effect of "You must be Mr. Green" after seeing Green bumbling about. We know from the end that Green is not the awkward, uncoordinated dolt he portrays himself to be for most of the movie. Is it possible that some other State Department Agent is in fact gay, has in fact been blackmailed, and is in fact a doofus and that the Mr. Green we see on the screen is simply an FBI Agent impersonating a victim to bring down Boddy? It seems highly unlikely. Mr. Boddy simply has to know what the real Mr. Green looks like. The evidence for blackmail has to be physical and incontrovertible to be effective. If you couldn't tell who it was it wouldn't work. This movie takes place in 1954 too, there was no computer trickery that could create the evidence and its doubtful that Mr. Green was willing to go to Cruising levels of undercover to create it. 

So if the proof of blackmail couldn't be faked and Mr. Green couldn't be impersonating a real victim, how did he get pulled in close enough to Mr. Boddy's group to infiltrate the dinner? Remember, in theory, Mr. Boddy is so sure of his evidence against the dinner guests he thinks he can get them to murder people, then replace them as his spies.

The Answer:

One of Mr. Boddy's spies has to have turned against him and is working for the government. Mr. Green could not have instigated the blackmail against himself on his own. That would involve faking a gay lifestyle just hoping that one of Boddy's spies notice and try and exploit it. That may never happen. But if the Cook, Cop, Butler, Yvette, etc. turned informant for the government and started bringing false info on FBI Agent Green undercover as State Department Agent Green to Boddy, then it becomes much more plausible. While photographic evidence would still not exist, other plausible, first-person information could be created by Green and the informant that would convince Boddy's and bring Green into the fold.

So which informant could it be? Who knows. Given Yvette and Mrs. Scarlett's proximity to the sex trade, its possible that Yvette could be a first person witness to some faked gay prostitute and fake Green. The movie provides no Clue that I can see however.

Up Next: The J. Edgar Hoover Call