Murder by Death

Murder by Death is a 1976 American comedy mystery film directed by Robert Moore and written by Neil Simon. The film stars Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, James Coco, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith, Nancy Walker, and Estelle Winwood.
The plot is a broad parody or spoof of the traditional country-house whodunit, familiar to mystery fiction fans of classics such as Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None". The cast is an ensemble of British and American actors playing send-ups of well-known fictional sleuths, including Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Charlie Chan, Nick and Nora Charles, and Sam Spade. It also features a rare acting performance by author Truman Capote.
The film was presented at the Venice International Film Festival on September 5, 1976.
Plot.
A group of five renowned detectives, each accompanied by a relative or associate, is invited to "dinner and a murder" by the mysterious Lionel Twain. Having lured his guests to his mansion managed by a blind butler named Jamessir Bensonmum, who is later joined by a deaf-mute, illiterate cook named Yetta, Twain joins his guests at dinner. The house is then sealed off. Twain announces that he is the greatest detective in the world. To prove his claim, he challenges the guests to solve a murder that will occur at midnight; a reward of $1 million will be presented to the winner.
Before midnight the butler is found dead and Twain disappears, only to re-appear immediately after midnight dead from a stab wound. The cook is also discovered to have been an animated mannequin, now packed in a storage crate. The party spends the rest of the night investigating and bickering. They are manipulated by a mysterious behind-the-scenes force, confused by red herrings, and baffled by the "mechanical marvel" that is Twain's house. They ultimately find their own lives threatened. Each sleuth presents his or her theory on the case, pointing out the others' past connections to Twain and their possible motives for murdering him.
When they retire to their guest rooms for the night, the guests are each confronted by things that threaten to kill them: a snake, a venomous scorpion, a descending ceiling, poison gas, and a bomb. They all survive, and in the morning, they gather in the office, where they find the butler waiting, very much alive and not blind. Each detective presents a different piece of evidence with which they each independently solved the mystery, and in each case, they accuse the butler of being one of Twain's former associates.
At first, the butler plays the part of each person, male or female, with whom he is identified, but then he pulls off a mask to reveal Lionel Twain himself, alive. Twain disparages the detectives—and metafictionally, the authors who created them—for the way their adventures have been handled. He points out such authorial misdeeds as introducing crucial characters at the last minute for the traditional "twist in the tale" (something the assembled detectives had been doing a few minutes earlier) and withholding clues and information to make it impossible for the reader to solve the mystery. Each of the detectives departs the house empty-handed, none of them having won the $1 million. When asked whether there had been a murder, Wang replies, "Yes: killed good weekend."
Alone, Twain pulls off yet another mask to reveal Yetta, who smokes a cigarette and laughs maniacally while rings of cigarette smoke fill the screen.
Cast and characters.
The story takes place in and around the isolated country home populated by eccentric multi-millionaire Lionel Twain (Truman Capote), his blind butler Jamessir Bensonmum (Alec Guinness), and a deaf-mute cook named Yetta (Nancy Walker). "Lionel Twain" is a pun on "Lionel Train". The participants are all pastiches of famous fictional detectives:
Production.
The film was shot entirely at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, then named "The Burbank Studios".
Charles Addams, creator of "The Addams Family", drew the art and caricatures displayed at the beginning, during the end credits, and on the poster.
Deleted scenes.
An additional scene, not in the theatrical version but shown in some television versions, shows Sherlock Holmes (Keith McConnell) and Doctor Watson (Richard Peel) arriving as the other guests are leaving. Author Ron Haydock states that an early draft of Neil Simon's script featured Holmes and Watson actually solving the mystery, but their roles were reduced to a cameo appearance and finally deleted, as the lead actors felt they were being "upstaged."
There were three other scenes deleted from the film:
Novelization.
A novelization based on Neil Simon's script was written by H.R.F. Keating and published in the United States by Warner Books () and by Star Books in the United Kingdom. The novelization contains the deleted Tess Skeffington and Willie Wang scenes, as well as a totally different ending in which Bensonmum is revealed to be still alive and Twain admits that although the detectives failed, they failed brilliantly and have made him love them all again.
Reception.
Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" wrote that the film had one of Simon's "nicest, breeziest screenplays," with James Coco "very, very funny as the somewhat prissy take-off on Hercule Poirot" and David Niven and Maggie Smith "marvelous as Dick and Dora Charleston, though they haven't enough to do." Arthur D. Murphy of "Variety" called it "a very good silly-funny Neil Simon satirical comedy, with a super all-star cast," adding, "It's the sort of film one could see more than once and pick up on comedy bits unnoticed at first. Dave Grusin's music is another highlight." Charles Champlin of the "Los Angeles Times" found the film "amusing" but added, "Why it is only amusing, and not hilarious, madcap, riotous, rip-roaring, or richly romping, I don't entirely know. It's a short movie (94 minutes) but a slow one, surprisingly so when you'd have said knockabout speed was called for." Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film three stars out of four and wrote that "after getting off to a shaky start, the picture quickly hits a speedball comedy pace it doesn't lose until the unsatisfactory unravelling of the mystery." Gary Arnold of the "Washington Post" stated that "this burlesque whodunit is probably too static and thinly contrived to generate a lasting sense of pleasure, but it's the kind of skillfully obvious, mock-innocent spoof that seems good fun while it lasts, and the fun is enhanced by the most adept and attractive comedy cast in recent memory." John Simon wrote, "Murder by Death is not a movie to write or read about, but to be seen and modestly enjoyed".
On Rotten Tomatoes, "Murder by Death" holds a rating of 65% from 20 reviews.