Murder by Death

A parody of detective fiction written by Neil Simon. A wealthy eccentric invites the five most famous detectives in the world to his mansion. The guests are openly distorted versions of known characters: Sam Spade, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Charlie Chan and Nick and Nora Charles. The host announces that a murder will be committed at midnight and that whoever solves it will receive a million dollars. The humour is entirely in mocking the rules of the genre: hidden passages, cut electricity, a body that disappears, illogical explanations, and the detectives' excessive faith in their own methods. In the last section each of them offers a different solution and all of them are absurd. The cast is unusual: Peter Sellers, Peter Falk, David Niven, Maggie Smith, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester and the writer Truman Capote. Capote is not an actor and plays the host. Robert Moore, who came from theatre, directed, and the film keeps the smell of the stage. Before you watch, know this: Peter Sellers's character, based on Charlie Chan, is an impersonation of an Asian detective and that part is plainly racist now. Enjoyable for anyone who knows the clichés of the genre; for a viewer who does not, most of the jokes hang in the air.