Product: Murder by Death (1976)
Rating: 3.0
Funny Enough to Forgive Its Stupid Moments
The satire to end all satires. It takes a real murder mystery fan to appreciate all the nuances, but it's pretty funny. It's also very, very silly.Lionel Twain (Truman Capote) invites a group of famous fictional detectives to his spooky old mansion for "dinner and a murder." So we have Sam Diamond (Peter Falk), Jessica Marbles (Elsa Lanchester), Milo Perrier (James Coco), Dick and Dora Charleston (David Niven and Maggie Smith), and Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers), as satires of Sam Spade, Miss Jane Marple, Hercule Poirot, Nick and Nora Charles, and Charlie Chan. Then there is Alec Guinness as the blind butler and Nancy Walker as the deaf and dumb maid. The jokes get pretty tacky with this lot, as you can imagine. And don't expect the plot to make any sense.Nevertheless, it is a "can't help laughing" kind of movie.