A mystery movie was released 40 years ago that offered fans something unheard of for theatrical movie releases, making it one of Hollywood’s most daring films. Released in 1985, Clue adapted the popular board game into an Agatha Christie-style locked room murder mystery. However, the movie did something bizarre when it was time to reveal “whodunnit.”
With an all-star cast that included Tim Curry, Michael McKean, Christopher Lloyd, Madeline Kahn, and more, the movie was a box office bomb, failing to recoup its budget and leaving critics disappointed. However, thanks to retrospective reviews, it has a 72% Rotten Tomatoes score. Part of the original critics’ displeasure was what made Clue a cult classic.
Clue Took A Chance At Offering Multiple Endings In Theaters
Clue Had Three Different Endings That Played At Different Screenings
What makes Clue such a cult classic 40 years after it bombed in theaters is the ending. However, it isn’t just one ending, but three different endings. This was a daring move that played into the idea, similar to the board game, that anyone could be the killer. What took critics by surprise was that Clue had different endings at different screenings.
Each of the Clue endings featured a different killer, and the movie shifted at one point to offer unique endings that revealed each killer’s motivations and reasoning behind the killings. Miss Scarlet and the maid Yvette were the killers in one ending, Mrs. Peacock was the killer in the second ending, and the third ending had multiple killers.
This was split up between theatrical screenings. A person seeing a film at a theater in Boston might get the Miss Scarlet ending. Someone watching the movie across town, or possibly in a city like Miami, might get the Mrs. Peacock ending. An audience in Dallas might see the third ending with multiple murderers. This led super fans to seek out other theaters to see each ending.
Clue Made ‘Alternate Endings’ Popular Years Before DVDs Made Them Typical
All Three Clue Endings Are In The Blu-ray Edition
The good news is that people at home 40 years later can see all the endings. The Blu-ray and 4K releases of Clue include each ending in the main film, accompanied by тιтle cards between each ending. The first card asked, “How about this?” and the second said, “Here’s what really happened.” It was a novelty, but it made the movie great fun to watch.
This was also long before home video became a big deal. In the 1980s, VHS tapes had limited space, and the movie was almost all that could fit. Soon, Blu-rays offered virtually unlimited space for deleted scenes, audio commentary, featurettes, and even alternate endings.
Everything from the Jordan Peele horror movie Get Out to the Pixar movie Turning Red have alternate endings available on the Blu-ray releases. Like Clue, the horror movie 1408 has multiple alternate endings, with four different endings that change the entire meaning of the movie. Clue, however, was the film that did it first and to great effect.
