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A year before Star Wars tossed the film industry into a whole new galaxy of chasing action/adventure box office bonanzas Columbia release Murder by Death a parody of the sedate country-manor murder mysteries that by then had already fallen out of style.

Columbia Pictures

Written by celebrated playwright Neild Simon the film is a broad comedy lampooning many of the genre’s most recognized sleuths: James Coco’s Milo Perrier satirizing Poirot, Peter Falk as Sam Diamond a play on Sam Spade, Peter Sellers in atrocious ‘yellow face’ as Wang, a take on Charlie Chan. (I honestly can’t tell if Sellers’ ‘yellow face’ is a comment on the practice used in the Chan films or simple racist.) Elsa Lanchester as Jessica Marbles standing in for Miss Marple and David Niven and Maggie Smith for Nick & Nora Charles from The Thin Man series.

Rounding out the cast was Alec Guinness as the blind butler, Nancy Walker as the deaf mute and illiterate cook, and Truman Capote as Lionel Twain hosting the detective while taunting them with meta commentary on the source novels.

Neil Simon was one of America’s premier playwrights, penning classic that are still watched and loved today.

This was not one of them.

The ‘comedy’ is weak, forced, and scarcely induces even a forced smile. There are moments that have some worth, but they are few. I had watched this movie some 40 years earlier and the only comedic moment that stuck with me was Twain berating Wang for his racist broken English.

“Pronouns! Say your god damned pronouns!”

The physical comedy has no speed or action to it, the character-based humor is tepid, and the plot makes less sense in 1985’s Clue.

All in all, even on YouTube for free, this is one to miss.