Movie Review: Murder by Death (1976)

Murder by Death (1976) directed by Robert Moore

Five world-famous detectives are summoned to the isolated mansion of Lionel Twain (Truman Capote). Twain challenges them to a battle of wits--someone will be murdered at midnight and anyone who can solve the mystery by morning will get one million dollars. Twain wants to defeat them all to show that he is the greatest criminologist in the world. The detectives include familiar though renamed fictional detectives: Sam-Spade clone Sam Diamond (Peter Falk), Hercule-Poirot facsimile Milo Perrier (James Coco), Miss-Marple mimic Miss Marbles (Elsa Lanchester), Nick-and-Nora doppelgängers Dick and Dora (David Niven and Maggie Smith), and Charlie-Chan copy Wang (Peter Sellers). The emphasis is entirely on comedy as the cast moves through a lot of standard murder mystery situations, unpredictable plot twists, and low-brow comedy.

While the Neil Simon script is funny and a clever send-up of classic detective fiction, it has some problems. It both complains about and features overly-complicated plots with nonsensical twists and endings that are impossible to guess, much less deduce. Viewers need to be at least somewhat familiar with the characters to get some of the jokes. Sellers' stereotype-inspired performance does not fit with contemporary sensibilities (not on the level of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's but in the same neighborhood). On the other hand, the movie is very funny and is just an excuse to poke fun at classic detectives and the genre. I did laugh a lot. I probably shouldn't have thought a lot about it.

Mildly recommended.