Review: The Last of Sheila

A year after his gossip columnist wife Sheila (Yvonne Romain of “Curse of the Werewolf” in her final role before switching careers) was killed in a hit-and-run at a party, rich movie producer Clinton (James Coburn) invites six of his industry acquaintances to for a French Riviera cruise on his yacht for a week. Clinton is fond of elaborate parlour games, and has devised the perfect one for his colleagues in a game to be played in honour of his beloved Sheila. Each person is assigned an identity card that points to an embarrassing bit of gossip (Homosexual, child molester, shoplifter etc. Just a bit of pretend fun, according to a gleeful Clinton. The object is to protect your own secret and guess everyone else’s through a treasure hunt-style series of clues. Unfortunately when a dead body shows up, the remaining people start to suspect that this game and those gossipy identity cards are very much not to a particular someone’s amusement. Richard Benjamin and Joan Hackett play a screenwriter and his wife, James Mason is a director of TV commercials, Raquel Welch and Ian McShane are an actress and her toyboy manager-husband, and Dyan Cannon is a giggly, fun-loving talent agent.

 

Actor Anthony Perkins and playwright Stephen Sondheim were friends who apparently used to host ‘treasure hunt’ game nights for their often famous friends, including director Herbert Ross (“Play it Again, Sam”, “The Seven Per-Cent Solution”). The latter encouraged the former to conceive of a screenplay based on such parlour games and thus we have this 1973 Hollywood insider murder-mystery with a very 1973 cast and set in the south of France. It’s an irresistible plot and the novice screenwriters are in full-on bitchy gossip mode where only the names are changed (though it’s pretty obvious to everyone except Ms. Raquel Welch that she’s meant to be playing herself here. She was told the character was based on Ann-Margaret. Aw, that was nice of them to lie). A jolly good time will be had by one and all, and even a murder or two, with all but one of the characters each representing a different profession in the film industry: Director, producer, manager, agent, screenwriter, and actress.

 

Of the cast, the three standouts are easily James Coburn, James Mason, and a scene-stealing Dyan Cannon, who seems to be having more fun than anyone else playing the fun-loving, bikini-clad talent agent. I’ve always said James Coburn was the coolest actor to ever live, and he’s pitch-perfect here as the wealthy producer and deviser of a particularly devilish mystery game. His first scene has him puffing on a cigar and confidently blowing smoke rings. Vintage Coburn, albeit vintage middle-period Coburn perhaps, no longer quite the Derek Flint suave hippie-ish ladies man. In a role that plays slightly like his manipulative spy in “The Internecine Project”, Coburn is in his element getting to be alternately cool and devious in the one character. To play perhaps the smartest character in the whole film, Sir James Mason couldn’t be more perfectly cast. Previously having played Dr. Watson no less, Mason brings a heck of a lot of class and sleuthing intellect to his role as the director of mostly TV commercials. Raquel Welch apparently drove poor Mason crazy with her supposedly rude behaviour. All I’ll say for her is that she’s thankfully cast in a role that doesn’t stretch her modest talents: a young starlet. She’s a tad mousy and beige, but mostly fine. A very young Ian McShane was in his brooding, handsome phase here playing Welch’s ambitious manager-husband. Kind of a more handsome Oliver Reed, he’s just seedy and ambitious enough to make you think he’s quite possibly the killer here. It’s quite interesting watching McShane here, he’s a completely different actor now in his late 70s. Richard Benjamin and Joan Hackett were presumably pretty fashionable actors in 1973, but for me the former is much more impressive than the very beige latter. Watching Hackett here, she’s got little screen presence and you can’t help but rattle off the names of much more interesting actresses of the vintage who could’ve played the part more effectively: Lee Grant, Faye Dunaway (OK, Dunaway and Welch in the same film would be…tense to say the least), or even Elizabeth Hartmann. Benjamin is versatile enough as an actor to be quite convincingly innocent or quite convincingly guilty (for some reason I find him unsettling when sporting a moustache), which is good for this kind of film. The characters were all apparently written with real-life counterparts in mind, some more famous than others, some more obvious than others. So perhaps there’s a bit of an in-the-know quality that might leave you a tad out of the loop depending on your knowledge. I think it’s fairly obvious that Benjamin’s character is a loose Anthony Perkins rendering, and Cannon is playing a caricature of her then real-life agent Sue Mengers. Personally I’d be shocked if Coburn’s character wasn’t written with him somewhat in mind, even though he was an actor not a producer. It just seems like the perfect 70s Coburn character, a self-amused confidence that is cool without being completely arrogant. He seems high, possibly just high on life. Perhaps it’s just that Coburn put a lot of himself into it through his performance, I don’t know. I just couldn’t imagine anyone else in the part circa 1973.

 

Some might question why the characters keep playing the game once it becomes obvious that the game has been devised by someone with a bit of an acid-tongued axe to grind. However, it’s one of those things where if you’re thinking like that, you may as well not be watching it at all. You just have to go with it sometimes, and I think a film this fun is easy company. The film takes a little bit of time to really warm up, and there’s one particular scene that is just a bit too revealing of the culprit too early on and unfortunately a bit hard to miss. I would’ve liked that little moment to have been excised from the film, it’s certainly not needed. Otherwise, this one’s a cracker and the filmmakers do their best to throw in plenty of misdirection. And besides, it’s better to be a bit transparent than the extreme polar opposite. Some of the Agatha Christie mysteries that don’t allow the audience to play along at all (Lookin’ at you, “The Mirror Crack’d”). That kind of shit is no fun at all. Also, the person playing the culprit does have a pretty decent poker face I have to admit. This was my third time watching the film, so perhaps I’m being a tad harsh there anyway. Even with the transparency I found the finale to be tense and well-performed, culminating in an ending that is darkly funny.

 

A largely forgotten film now, this really is my kind of thing. 10 minutes too long and a little slow to start, it might not greatly appeal to all tastes. However, I thought this film was a hoot, even if the central mystery isn’t as mysterious as the filmmakers would like. A must for movie buffs and amateur sleuths, this is a highly engaging and often very clever murder/mystery with a pretty effective cast, and an absolutely perfect end credits song by Bette Midler (I won’t spoil which song, but it’s hilarious). This film is all class, great scenery too.

 

Rating: B