This month marked the 40th anniversary of the cinematic release of Clue, which starred a stellar ensemble cast that included Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Eileen Brennan, Christopher Lloyd, Lesley Ann Warren, and others. The filmmakers shot multiple endings, and much like the Parker Brothers’ game that inspired it, each of those endings revealed a different culprit responsible for the murders. Upon its 1985 release, moviegoers went to the theater unsure of which of the three endings they might see.

They also learned that the film didn’t follow the classic whodunit formula à la Agatha Christie, one with clues and red herrings sprinkled throughout the story. The film was instead a screwball comedy, one with an outrageous script written by John Landis (National Lampoon’s Animal House, 1978) and Jonathan Lynn (Yes Minister, 1980-84).

While the film flopped at the box office, it found new life upon its release on VHS and cable. In their homes, audiences could watch all three endings now spliced together (including one identified as the definitive ending, or “what really happened”) and embraced it as the comedic gem it intended to be.

But the film does more than deliver laughs. Set in a New England estate in 1954, the film also tells a story about the late Cold War of the 1980s. Through its humor and satire, Clue became a pop culture mirror into Reagan-era American politics and culture, one that looked to—and even helped reevaluate—the memory of the 1950s to lay bare the era’s rising conservatism.

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The 1985 film is based on the board game that first became popular in the 1950s. Inspired by the popular murder mysteries of the 1930s and 1940s, a British man named Anthony E. Pratt came up with the idea for a board game that turned players into sleuths. He did most of his work between 1943-45 while being quarantined indoors during the air raids of World War II. By 1947, he patented and sold the game as Clue (or, in England, as Cluedo). By........

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