Decades of Horror | Movie Reviews of 1970s Classic Horror Films
Nov 4, 2026 · 2 hr 11 min · 16 segments
Doc takes the Grue-Believers on a slight detour with his pick this week, MURDER BY DEATH (1976). The films spoofs various detective movies and literary characters along with “old dark ……
Gregory CrosbyGuestBill MulliganHostDoc RottenHost
Jeff MooreHost
so i i know i saw murder by death on television as a kid because i remember the ending uh very well but the rest of it was just a blur it's i haven't seen it in 40 odd years and this movie does not hold up uh in addition to peter seller's egregious yellow face uh he's not even very good at it it's kind of a waste of the great peter sellers The humor is completely obvious and sort of crass and sort of just based on sort of stereotypes and unfunny situations.
And you can tell, for one thing, Peter Falk is the only thing that raised a chuckle in me and the only time I laughed exactly once during this film.
And you can tell that Peter Falk is the standout, not just because Neil Simon writes all the best lines for him throughout the movie, but because two years later, Simon and this director did a riff on this by taking Peter Falk's character and giving him a whole movie called The Chief Detective.
So I didn't go searching up contemporaries reviews, but I would not be surprised if you went back and looked at movie reviews from 1976, everyone saying like, well, the best thing about this is clearly Peter Fogg.
I knew I was in trouble with the humor of this movie, right from the get-go because we have alec guinness playing the the clearly blind butler coming in and the whole sequence where he is stamping the invitations to the detectives yeah so you get a you you the the camera is on is on uh uh guinness with his eyes sort of rolled up like as if he was blind uh licking the stamps and and pounding you just hear the sound of him pounding the stamps uh there's even a close-up of his mouth and his tongue as he licks the stamp And what would have been brilliant is if then the next thing you saw was all five of the invitations perfectly stamped in the corner, completely unexpected, like, wow, somehow he managed to completely, no, it's exactly what you expect.
He is stamped at the desk in a crazy quilt pattern, not the actual invitations with the stamps.
So the moment that happened, I thought, oh, every joke in this is going to be telegraphed from a few miles out.
I found this movie, and I hate to say it, I found this movie enormously tedious and not much fun, except for Peter Falk.
Anytime Peter Falk was on screen, it kicks into life uh and peter paul is great and the the big takeaways for me from this film are peter paul it makes you want to track down the chief detective and see if it's better or the same or or just you know whatever and the urge to once again watch clue
preamble did show clue from my last semester to my murder on stage and screen court course
so i i know i saw murder by death on television as a kid because i remember the ending uh very well but the rest of it was just a blur it's i haven't seen it in 40 odd years and this movie does not hold up uh in addition to peter seller's egregious yellow face uh he's not even very good at it it's kind of a waste of the great peter sellers The humor is completely obvious and sort of crass and sort of just based on sort of stereotypes and unfunny situations.
And you can tell, for one thing, Peter Falk is the only thing that raised a chuckle in me and the only time I laughed exactly once during this film.
And you can tell that Peter Falk is the standout, not just because Neil Simon writes all the best lines for him throughout the movie, but because two years later, Simon and this director did a riff on this by taking Peter Falk's character and giving him a whole movie called The Chief Detective.
So I didn't go searching up contemporaries reviews, but I would not be surprised if you went back and looked at movie reviews from 1976, everyone saying like, well, the best thing about this is clearly Peter Fogg.
I knew I was in trouble with the humor of this movie, right from the get-go because we have alec guinness playing the the clearly blind butler coming in and the whole sequence where he is stamping the invitations to the detectives yeah so you get a you you the the camera is on is on uh uh guinness with his eyes sort of rolled up like as if he was blind uh licking the stamps and and pounding you just hear the sound of him pounding the stamps uh there's even a close-up of his mouth and his tongue as he licks the stamp And what would have been brilliant is if then the next thing you saw was all five of the invitations perfectly stamped in the corner, completely unexpected, like, wow, somehow he managed to completely, no, it's exactly what you expect.
He is stamped at the desk in a crazy quilt pattern, not the actual invitations with the stamps.
So the moment that happened, I thought, oh, every joke in this is going to be telegraphed from a few miles out.
I found this movie, and I hate to say it, I found this movie enormously tedious and not much fun, except for Peter Falk.
Anytime Peter Falk was on screen, it kicks into life uh and peter paul is great and the the big takeaways for me from this film are peter paul it makes you want to track down the chief detective and see if it's better or the same or or just you know whatever and the urge to once again watch clue
preamble did show clue from my last semester to my murder on stage and screen court course
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