Murder by Death (1976)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Featurette-A Conversation with Neil Simon Filmographies-Cast & Crew Theatrical Trailer Trailer-Cheap Detective; Manhattan Murder Mystery
Rating
Year Of Production	1976
Running Time	90:47
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	Robert Moore
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Alec Guinness David Niven Eileen Brennan Elsa Lanchester James Coco James Cromwell Maggie Smith Nancy Walker Peter Falk Peter Sellers Truman Capote
Case	?
RPI	$19.95	Music	Dave Grusin

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French German Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    With a cast that includes Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith, a young James Cromwell and a screenplay by Neil Simon, how can this film go wrong?

    This is a brilliant parody of the murder mystery genre, poking fun at various fictional detectives such as Charlie Chan, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Sam Spade, and the "Thin Man." Neil Simon is very obviously a murder mystery fan, as many of the jokes are based on a shared familiarity with the idiosyncrasies of the various detectives on which the film's characters are based upon.

    Eccentric recluse Lionel Twain (featuring the screen debut of Truman Capote) invites five of the world's most famous detectives to a weekend at his gothic castle. He obviously also has a keen sense of humour, for he hires a blind butler, Jamesir Bensonmum (Alec Guinness), and a deaf and mute chef, Yetta (Nancy Walker). Needless to say, these two are completely incapable of communicating with each other, creating some farcical situations.

    The first to arrive is Catalina Island Police Inspector Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers) and his adopted son Willie (Richard Narita). Then, in rapid succession, arrive the "gentleman" New York detective Dick Charleston (David Niven) and his wife Dora (Maggie Smith), the Belgian Inspector Milo Perrier (James Coco) and his chauffeur Marcel (James Cromwell), hard-nosed private d*** Sam Diamond (Peter Falk) and his "dame" Tess Skeffington (Eileen Brennan), and finally amateur sleuth Miss Jessica Marbles (Elsa Lanchester) and her nurse Miss Withers (Estelle Winwood).

    Each detective successfully avoids the first "trap": being crushed by a falling gargoyle. At the dinner table, they meet Lionel who says he intends to prove that he is smarter than all of them by daring them to solve a murder - to be committed in the castle that very night at the stroke of midnight. The detective who successfully unravels the crime will earn a million dollars. However, even before the clock strikes twelve, the first death has already occurred - that of the butler. As the famous minds try to solve the mystery, they encounter many strange things ...

    As you would expect, everything is revealed at the end ... or is it?

Video

    The transfer is presented in widescreen 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced, based on a 35mm film print. The widescreen transfer is slightly window-boxed, which may be an issue if you have adjusted your video display for no overscan.

    The quality of the film source is surprisingly good, with minimal film marks. Grain, although present, is not objectionable and colours are a touch under-saturated but at least reasonably balanced. Detail levels are reasonable, though the overall look of the film is probably a bit on the soft side.

    Compression artefacts are limited to a slight amount of Gibb's effect ringing around opening titles.

    There are a fair amount of subtitle tracks available (I counted 19). I turned on the English subtitle track briefly just to verify that it was there. Dialogue transcription is of about average accuracy.

    This is a single sided single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are no less than five audio tracks available, in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. All are in Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s).

    Given that the film was originally released in mono, I suspect these are mono tracks. In any case, I did not notice any significant panning of Foley effects or stereo separation of background music.

    I listened to the English audio track, which sounded somewhat mediocre, but probably consistent with that for similar vintage films.

    Dialogue quality was reasonable, and I did not notice any audio synchronization issues.

    The original music is surprisingly done by Dave Grusin. It is mainly orchestral, and in the style of other murder mystery films.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    I suppose some extras are better than nothing.

Menu

    The menus are 16x9 enhanced but static.

Featurette-A Conversation with Neil Simon (10:21)

    This is a short retrospective interview with Neil Simon, and features excerpts from the film and some production stills. It is presented in full frame and Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s). Incidentally, I learnt that Alec Guinness was reading the script of "Star Wars" and considering whether he should be playing the role of "Obi Wan Kenobi" whilst shooting this film.

Filmographies-Cast & Crew

    This provides one still for each of the following:

• Robert Moore (director)
• Neil Simon (screenwriter)
• Truman Capote ("Lionel Truman")
• Peter Falk ("Sam Diamond")
• Peter Sellers ("Sidney Wang")
• David Niven ("Dick Charleston")
• Maggie Smith ("Dora Charleston")
• Alec Guinness ("Jamesir Bensonmum")

Theatrical Trailer (3:10)

    This is presented in full frame/open matte and Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s).

Trailer-Cheap Detective (3:02); Manhattan Murder Mystery (1:41)

    Cheap Detective is the "sequel" to Murder By Death. The trailer is presented in Pan & Scan and Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s). It looks fairly soft. The trailer for Manhattan Murder Mystery is presented in full frame/open matte and Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s). This one looks very brownish.

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Full frame transfer
• Chinese, Korean and Thai subtitle tracks

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

• Additional foreign language audio tracks and subtitle tracks

    I would rate both versions as substantially the same, apart from the additional full frame transfer on the Region 1 version.

    Murder By Death is a clever spoof of the murder-mystery genre and famous fictional crime solvers.

    The video transfer is fairly decent given the film's age.

    The audio transfer is mediocre.

    Extras include a retrospective interview with Neil Simon, filmographies and some trailers.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall