VeganMoFo: Clue

When a movie adaptation of Battleship was announced, of course people thought it was ridiculous (see above for the faces I made). Who would base a movie on a board game? Johnathan Lynn and John Landis, that’s who! Clue is basically a movie version of a murder mystery dinner party – complete with the dinner!

One a dark rainy night in 1954, a group of people gather in a mansion, where they are greeted by only a butler, a maid, and a cook. None of them know exactly why they’re there or who invited them. But they’re going to find out, dun dun DUNNNNNN! There is suspense, there is intrigue, there is even the candlestick! And of course, there is murder and no one knows who did it.

Clue features some of the funniest people to have ever walked across the screen, and all of the jokes are done with a deadpan delivery. Madeline Kahn’s “flames on the side of my face” speech was totally improvised. If you yearn for a time when a movie wasn’t carried solely by dick jokes (ahem, 21 Jump Street), this is for you. It’s also only rated PG so even though people drop like flies, it’s kid-friendly murdering!

When you watch the movie, you’re given three different endings. When it was originally shown in theaters, the movie had one of the endings randomly attached so people had to read about the other endings in the newspaper (or find out which theaters had which endings so they could see them all).

Now let’s look at this cast! The cast only consists of about a dozen people (besides the huge amount of extras at the end), and like I said, they’re all incredibly funny people. Tim Curry (Rocky Horror, lots of voice acting), Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Taxi), Madeline Kahn (Blazing Saddles, other Mel Brooks movies), Martin Mull (Roseanne and many other t.v. shows), Lesley Ann Warren (In Plain Sight, Secretary) Michael McKean (Spinal Tap, SNL, Laverne and Shirley) and Eileen Brennan (7th Heaven, Jeepers Creepers) make up the main cast. Colleen Camp (most recognizable as Mrs. Vanderhoff in Wayne’s World) plays the booby french maid, Jane Wiedlin (The Go-Go’s) has a cameo as a singing telegram, and Howard Hesseman (Johnny Fever from WKRP) is The Chief. Phew! Onto the menu:

Entree: The movie takes place in New England, and the dinner party starts with soup, so New England “Clam” Chowder is an obvious choice.
Side: In the movie, they eat soup followed by…monkey brains (unseen, thank god). Obviously there’s nothing vegan to approximate that (thank god), so I just went looking for a semi-fancy (no jello involved) 50’s recipe, so of course I went straight to Meet the Shannonsto look through their ‘Betty Goes Vegan’ recipes and came out with this Bacon and Spinach Salad complete with a hard boiled ‘egg’.
Dessert: Death by Chocolate Rum Cake (in the study, with the cake knife).
Cocktail: I don’t drink, but if you do you should pour yourself an old fashioned Highball.

posted: 12 October 1
under: veganmofo