The Last of Sheila

Saw The Last of Sheila (Thanks, Anne!) It was a fun mystery from the 70s. It opens with the hit-n-run murder of a woman named Sheila. We then clip over to the opening credits which play over her husband writing on a typewriter, surrounded by mechanical puzzles and board games. Clearly, he is the master manipulator whose diabolical cleverness will expose her killer. He has probably already figured it out, we conclude and will be killed himself, only to reveal that he has faked his own death, or something like that. The sequence ends with a freeze-frame of him smiling in front of a Cluedo board which has been tacked up on the wall. Very cute.

The characters are all fast-talking, pun-spewing Hollywood types. Their repartee went a little too fast for me, leaving me to try to reconstruct what they said many times. Thankfully, when the grand explanation-scene comes, they give the patter a rest in favor of slow, clear enunciation. The film was clearly shot in the 70s but may well have been written in the 50s. Both decades were not very kind to women and of the three women, I report two shrinking violets and one oversexed blond. Not so bad for the 70s. Homosexuals also come up but I can't really talk about their treatment without major spoilers, so: I thought the treatment of the homosexual was perfectly fine. It unfortunately comes from an age when the only homosexual roles that existed were murderers and psychopaths, so it's not very progressive, alas. That said, I think it could be shown today without inciting major unrest.

The film very nicely drops coy little hints and you can indeed figure out who done it long before the characters do. I didn't, but I would often understand a clue a few minutes before it was officially explained. For example: (spoilers) I distinctly remembered an "Alcoholic" card although it didn't show up at the card-claiming scene, and I understood the SHEILA acronym as soon as they showed it again which happens, of course, just before the characters explain what that clue means to each other. This made me feel smug and clever without actually spoiling the film. (Also, this completely petty, but I wanted to see exactly what little puzzles the puppet-master had sprinkled around his yacht. I love little puzzles like that.)

The film is very fun. It doesn't have the strongest characters or writing, but then mysteries are usually so preoccupied with creating an unpredictable but sensible plot that all other aspects play second fiddle. It does have an incongruously hilarious scene during the exposition scene (two words: hand puppets) and I am completely in love with the idea of the central game they play on the yacht. A very fun and clever little film.