Tag: Tim Curry

Clue (1985)

Screened at Luna Cinemas Leederville as part of the Trash Classics season programmed by VHS Tracking.

“Imagine seeing Clue (1985) when it came out with the three different endings, and NOT seeing the one with Madeline Khan talking about the flames on her face!” a woman remarked to me after the screening. She also talked about having the film on VHS, and on DVD, and that it was something her kids continually rewatched.

The last time I watched Clue, I was at home alone and thinking about it for a future Trash Classics program. Seeing it on the big screen, and with a full audience in Cinema 1, was definitely a greater way to experience it and the best time I’ve had watching it (out of the four or five times I’ve seen it in my life!). Enjoying every actor’s expressions and reaction shots, such as Eileen Brennan around the dining table. Hearing the continual laughter throughout the movie. A screening like that can really reveal what makes a movie have a shelf life, attendees ranging across the generations. Director Jonathan Lynn aiming for screwball comedy pace, but also carrying the 1980s-era’s taste for loudness equals comedy, people running around and bumping into each other, one-liners and verbal routines. There’s irony in a movie being adapted from a board-game and the murder mystery cliches, but there’s also a full-blown commitment to farce. If the long rumoured remake ever eventuated, could it even match the level of commitment? Of Tim Curry hot-stepping around like a mansion like maniac and repeating the whole plot of the movie to the characters across the climax? 

For the screening, there was a Murder Mystery costume competition and thanks to those who dressed up, including a French maid, a Mrs White, a Miss Scarlett, a combined Butler, a Columbo and someone who made their own t-shirt with the “flames on the side of my face” quote, which was amazing!

The Shout (1978)

This was an odd one and I knew it was going to be. The Shout (1978) is a British horror film directed by Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski. All I knew about the film was that it was about a man – named Crossley and played by Alan Bates – who can kill by shouting. Based on a novel by Robert Graves, it starts with a cricket game held at a psychiatric hospital where a mix of patients, doctors and townspeople are playing. A young man played by Tim Curry is asked to keep score with Crossley who tells his story – wandering into the lives of a couple living in a quaint village (filmed in the atmospheric cliffs of North Dover). The husband (John Hurt) plays the organ and makes experimental music; his wife (Susannah York) doesn’t know of his infidelities. Crossley strides into their home as a strange guest who slowly takes over; is this magic, like the ‘terror shout’ he says he learned from living with an indigenous shaman in Australia, or is this all a psychological game? Much like the original Wicker Man, it plays like a realistic drama that is shot through with unease and suggestion, underscored by the use of dissolves and match cuts in editing, and by the sound design and the score by Tony Banks and Michael Rutherford from Genesis. Also stars a young Jim Broadbent as a patient. The film also reminded me of Killing Of A Sacred Deer in the way a domestic unit is upended by an unusual interloper. In any case, it is an eerie experience that has both a sensual and disquieting quality. For those who have an interest in British occult and surreal dramas, The Shout is streaming on SBS OnDemand.