Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Murder by Death

The movie I am writing about this week is Murder By Death.

There are many reasons to watch this movie -- David Niven, Alec Guiness, Maggie Smith, Truman Capote, and the king of them all Peter Sellers. They all come together in this amazing comedy. Peter Sellers turns in a brilliant spoof of Charlie Chan -- his character in the movie is Wang -- and packs in a whole new, and even funnier, one liners that the Charlie Chan was synonymous with. And of course he delivers it without any prepositions. Take this: "Conversation like television on honeymoon -- unnecessary."

The movie itself is a spoof on several well known detective characters -- Poirot is Perriet, Columbo is Sam Diamond, Miss Marple is Miss Marbles, Charlie Chan is Sidney Wang, and so on. They all come together in a mansion, as guests of Lionel Twain, played by Truman Capote. The movie unfolds as a murder mystery -- or spoofs one. All these supposedly brilliant detective minds are supposed to solve the murder mystery to get a prize. Don't expect any brilliant detective work here -- just laughs.

Another cute one from the movie, this time by Sam Diamond -- "This all could mean just one thing.... and I don't know what that is!"

2 comments:

Umang said...

Watch City Of God (Cicade de Deus in Portuguese) if you haven't already:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317248/.
It's amazing, and highly recommended.

Anonymous said...

Murder by Death is amongst the best ever. A phrase from Dick and Dora Charleston:
'Look Dora, up there... a blind butler!'
'Don't let him park the car, Dicky.'