{"id":37151,"date":"2024-10-16T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-16T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=37151"},"modified":"2024-10-15T21:23:51","modified_gmt":"2024-10-16T01:23:51","slug":"murder-by-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=37151","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Murder by Death&#8221; (1976) written by Neil Simon, starring Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, James Coco, Elsa Lanchester,David Niven, Maggie Smith, Nancy Walker, Estelle Winwood and James Cromwell \/ Z-View"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2024\/z101624zview_murderbydeath.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"739\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong><em><i><b>Murder by Death<\/b><\/i><\/em> (1976)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Director: <strong>Robert Moore<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Screenplay: <strong>Neil Simon<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Stars: <strong>Peter Falk, Alec Guinness<\/strong><strong>, Peter Sellers, Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, James Coco, Elsa Lanchester,<br \/>\nDavid Niven, Maggie Smith, Nancy Walker, Estelle Winwood <\/strong>and <strong>James Cromwell.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Tagline: By the time Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, James Coco, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith, Nancy Walker and Estelle Winwood figure out whodunnit, you&#8217;ll die laughing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Plot&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The eccentric and wealthy Lionel Twain (Capote) invites the five greatest detectives in the world for dinner. The guests include&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\">Sam Diamond (Falk) and his sexy assistant Tess Skeffington (Brennan)<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\">Sidney Wang (Sellers) and his son Willie Wang<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\">Monsieur Milo Perrier (Coco) and his chauffeur, Marcel (Cromwell)<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\">Jessica Marbles (Elsa Lanchester) and her nurse, Miss Withers (Winwood)<\/li>\n<li>Dick (Niven) &amp; Dora Charleston (Smith) and their pet pooch, Myron<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The guests arrive to Twain&#8217;s remote creepy old mansion.\u00a0 They are\u00a0 unaware that others were invited.\u00a0 When everyone sits down for dinner, Twain pushes a button that locks all doors and windows.\u00a0 He then announces that someone will be murdered at midnight.\u00a0 Twain says that he will give one million dollars to the detective that solves the crime.<\/p>\n<p>Slightly before midnight the butler is found dead.\u00a0 Then right after midnight, Twain&#8217;s body is discovered.\u00a0 He&#8217;s dead from twelve stab wounds.<\/p>\n<p>Let the game begin.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Thoughts (beware of spoilers)\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Murder by Death<\/em> is a parody of the great &#8220;old dark house&#8221; and movie detective whodunits of the past.\u00a0 Sam Diamond is a hardboiled dick from the mold of Sam Spade.\u00a0 Sidney Wang and his son is based on Charlie Chan and his #1 son.\u00a0 Monsieur Milo Perrier is modeled on Hercule Poirot.\u00a0 Jessica Marbles was inspired by Miss Marple. Dick &amp; Dora Charleston are stand-ins for Nick and Nora Charles.<\/p>\n<p>The theatrical film debut of James Cromwell.\u00a0 It is also the final theatrical film of Nancy Walker.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The animated cartoon drawings of the detectives at the start\u00a0 of the film were created by Charles Addams, the creator of <em>The Addams Family<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The doorbell screams are Fay Wray&#8217;s from <em>King Kong<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re a fan of the type of movies parodied, you should enjoy this.\u00a0 Everyone gets a moment to shine.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: inherit; color: initial;\"><em><strong><i><b>Murder by Death<\/b><\/i> (1976)<\/strong> <\/em>rates 3 of 5 stars.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/logo\/zview_c.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"100\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2024\/z101624zview_murderbydeath2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"379\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Murder by Death (1976) Director: Robert Moore Screenplay: Neil Simon Stars: Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Eileen Brennan, Truman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,51,63,65,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-crime","category-humor","category-trivia","category-z-view"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37151"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37260,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37151\/revisions\/37260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}