Film

Clue

Name: Clue
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Mystery
Released: 1985
Cast: Tim Curry, Eileen Brennan, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean

A gonzo whodunit built from a board game, Clue crams six paranoid guests, a corpse, and Tim Curry's frantic butler into one stormy mansion and lets the accusations fly. It's fast, silly, endlessly quotable, and structured around alternate endings that reward rewatching. Perfect for anyone who wants farce with an actual puzzle underneath it, not just chaos for its own sake.

TMDb rating

7.2

If you liked this

Knives Out2019

Rian Johnson resets the country-house whodunit for modern audiences, stacking a starry ensemble around a fiendishly clever plot that's as funny as it is twisty, and it never stops trusting your attention.

But The tone is drier and more plot-focused than Clue's screwball chaos — less slapstick, more puzzle-box satisfaction.

Murder by Death1976

Neil Simon wrote this spoof of famous fictional detectives gathering for a rigged dinner party, and it's the closest thing to Clue's DNA — same houseful of eccentrics, same gleeful contempt for the genre's rules.

But The gags are broader and dated in places; some of the parody targets have faded from cultural memory.

Gosford Park2001

Robert Altman turns the country-house murder mystery into something richer — a class-war ensemble piece where the whodunit is almost beside the point next to the servants' quiet dramas.

But It's slower and more serious than Clue, with comedy that simmers rather than erupts.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Thin Man1934

Clue's entire engine — glamorous suspects trading one-liners over a corpse — is a direct descendant of this 1934 screwball original; it's the ancestor Clue is affectionately ribbing.

Nick and Nora Charles trade martinis and wisecracks while solving a murder, and this is where the whole murder-as-excuse-for-witty-banter genre basically begins — decades before Clue parodied it.

But Black-and-white, slower-paced, and its charm depends on you enjoying dialogue more than physical comedy.

Murder on the Orient Express2017

A lavish, all-star reboot of the genre's most famous puzzle, with a moustache-forward Kenneth Branagh interrogating suspects in gorgeous train carriages — comfort food for anyone who loves a good confession scene.

But It plays the mystery straight rather than for laughs, so the comic energy of Clue is mostly absent.

The Birdcage1996no page yet

Not a mystery, but the same manic ensemble-farce engine — a dinner party spiraling into chaos as everyone lies to everyone else, powered by pitch-perfect comic performances.

But There's no murder plot at all; the pleasure here is pure social farce rather than genre parody.

Waiting for Guffman1997

Christopher Guest's ensemble of hopeless small-town theater types delivers the same joy of watching a cast of oddballs collide, each character funnier than the last.

But It's mockumentary rather than farce, low-key rather than frantic, and has zero interest in plot mechanics.

A Shot in the Dark1964

Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau stumbling through a country-house murder investigation is slapstick mystery at its most elegant, with the same tangle of suspects and secrets.

But The comedy leans on one bumbling character rather than an ensemble of equally funny weirdos.

Airplane!1980

If what you loved about Clue was rapid-fire jokes stacked on jokes with a straight-faced cast committing fully to nonsense, this disaster-movie spoof is the gold standard.

But There's no mystery or plot to solve — it's pure joke-density with none of Clue's structure.

Fawlty Towers1975

British farce doesn't get tighter than this — a hotel full of liars, secrets, and escalating catastrophe, with John Cleese's Basil spiraling exactly the way Clue's cast does at dinner.

But It's a sitcom with no mystery plot, and the humiliation comedy is harsher than Clue's ever gets.

Ready or Not2019

Same premise — outsiders trapped in a mansion with a secretive family and a rulebook nobody explained — but played as splatter-horror instead of farce, proving how far the formula stretches.

A bride discovers her new in-laws' family tradition is a deadly game of hide-and-seek, and it takes Clue's trapped-mansion, sinister-family setup and drenches it in blood and pitch-black comedy.

But It's genuinely gory and violent in ways Clue never approaches — this is horror first, comedy second.

The Exterminating Angel1962

Same bones as Clue — trapped guests, a house that won't let anyone leave, social masks slipping — but Buñuel plays it as existential dread rather than dinner-party comedy, the same premise's darkest possible mirror.

Luis Buñuel's surrealist masterpiece traps dinner party guests in a room they cannot physically bring themselves to leave, and civility dissolves into something strange and unsettling over days.

But It's Spanish-language arthouse cinema with no plot resolution in any conventional sense — deliberately baffling by design.