The Last of Sheila (1973)

the audience applauded

Good concept, poorly executed.

Brilliant and touching

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

James Coburn stars as a movie bigwig who hosts six pals for a week on his yacht in the south of France. He loves intricate puzzles and has planned a clever game that will identify the killer of his late wife.A famous cast is the highlight of this film and while it oozes glamour and Hollywood in-jokes, my mind wandered and it took three tries to finish watching it. Coburn is robust and charismatic and also convincingly sadistic. Dyan Cannon is good as an airhead agent but her never-ending, raucous guffaws are tiresome. Ian McShane and Raquel Welch are good as minor characters. Joan Hackett, Richard Benjamin, and James Mason have the most screen time; they are all excellent in well-developed roles and a pleasure to watch.In my opinion, the game that the guests are playing is too convoluted and pointless to follow; there are constant red herrings and it doesn't amount to much in the end. One of the stars leaves halfway through and is greatly missed. Plot holes abound and it's hard to identify with any of the characters or the story.This film is recommended for those who like complex puzzles and clues. I thought it was just okay.

The script for "The Last of Sheila" was written by two men who were both better known for other things, Stephen Sondheim who is best known as a composer, and the actor Anthony Perkins, best remembered as Norman Bates in "Psycho". The film opens with a young woman named Sheila Greene being killed in a hit-and-run accident. A year later her husband Clinton, a wealthy movie producer, invites six friends, all connected with the film industry, to join him on a pleasure cruise off the French Riviera aboard his luxury yacht, the "Sheila". Once the cruise is under way, Clinton informs his guests of the game that he has organised for their entertainment. Each of the six is given a card containing what Clinton calls "a pretend piece of gossip"- e.g. "you are an informer", "you are a homosexual", etc. Each guest must keep his or her "piece of gossip" a secret from the others; the idea behind the game is that, every evening, the guests are given a clue then have to take part in a treasure-hunt type game to find out who holds the card relating to that evening's "gossip". After the first evening, however, it begins to appear the gossip contained on each card may not be "pretend" at all but rather the revelation of an actual secret; that evening's card read "you are a shoplifter" and it is revealed that one of the guests, an actress named Alice Wood, was indeed once arrested for shoplifting. Some of the guests begin to suspect that Clinton may be playing a cruel game with them and that his real purpose may be to expose the person responsible for the death of his wife. (He refers to the game as "The Sheila Greene Memorial Gossip Game"). It therefore does not come as any great surprise when Clinton is found murdered on the second evening. "The Last of Sheila" is really a film of two halves. The first half seems like a stylish, elegant and unusual mystery, which keeps us wondering just why Clinton is playing such a sadistic game with his guests and what the outcome will be. The trouble is that by far the most interesting character is James Coburn's Clinton, a sinister puppeteer pulling the strings of the others. When Clinton is killed about halfway through, the puppets' strings are cut and they have to try and stand on their own feet. From this point on the film turns into an Agatha Christie-type whodunit, albeit one without a Miss Marple or Poirot-type detective; the guests have to solve the mystery for themselves. (One might ask why they do not simply call in the police; the answer is that if they did that there would not be much of a film).Apart from Coburn, in the sort of cool-but-sinister role I have come to associate with him, none of the cast make much of an impression. Of the female members, only Joan Hackett has much to do; Raquel Welch and Dyan Cannon just seem to be there to lend some glamour, in accordance with the seventies rule that you could not set a film on a yacht without having a couple of girls in bikinis to brighten up the scene. (Welch appears not to have enjoyed making this film very much; at the time there were press reports of frequent clashes between her and the director Herbert Ross and her co-star James Mason). The other male members of the cast, Richard Benjamin, Mason, and Ian McShane, all seem too relaxed about the situation they find themselves in, even though it is a situation which could end with at least one of them going to the guillotine. (France still had the death penalty in 1973).Perkins and Sondheim won the 1974 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture Screenplay. I can only think that there was little competition for the award. (I must admit that I cannot think of any really good mystery films from 1973). What starts off as something potentially fresh and original ends up as something over- familiar and hackneyed. 5/10

Top notch yet obscure mystery concerning a group of friends assembled by the eccentric James Coburn to stay aboard his luxury yacht to ostensibly play an elaborate treasure hunt on nearby islands. But the fun and games turn into a bizarre and brutal murder club when a plot to uncover the killer of Coburn's wife is revealed. Everyone's a suspect, and through a process of elimination, the pieces of the game begin to implicate certain members of the group, as skeletons are bared and recriminations over the death of Coburn's wife Sheila (Yvonne Romaine, seen in flashback only) taunt the group.Benjamin is essentially the lead player, with great support from Hackett and Mason in particular. Raquel Welch looks great in her skimpy attire, ditto Dyan Cannon and Ian McShane isn't necessarily dwarfed by his co-stars. Kudos all round. Several red herrings and cul-de-sacs maintain the suspense, and the ingenious wrap up resolves all loose ends fittingly in a satisfying conclusion. An early theme song by Better Midler ("Friends") is also memorable. Interesting that this was co-authored by Anthony Perkins; another superb achievement in his impressive film repertoire.The careful dialogue and cinematography, timing and distinctive characterisations concoct an elaborate web of deceit that should keep the most avid arm-chair detective guessing until the end. Indeed Coburn teases us in the first act when Mason says he likes any game in which he doesn't have to move, to which Coburn responds with a Cheshire-grin "you don't have to for this one, if you're smart enough". While it remains little known (surprising when you consider the names attached), it's well worth tracking down for those who enjoy a neatly crafted mystery.

This really does have significant spoilers. See the movie first.For many people, this would be a mild amusement. As I am interested in the tools for imagination accessible to me, I am interested in narrative structure in film. That means that the evolution and elaborations of the noir-mystery family tree is essential to me. Sometimes I watch a film that plays with or advances some concept in this family and find its only value is noting where it fits in the streams that I use.But this film is actually good as a mystery, as an engaging amusement.It is a film about film people, assembling to make a film that we discover is the film we see. It is a mystery in which the traditional detective roles are reversed. Usually we would have a lone detective with a closed, captive set of suspects, here on a yacht. Here, the suspects are all turned into detectives to solve a murder of a year previously; the device for this is a game designed by the owner of the yacht, the husband of the murdered woman and the producer of the film-to-be-made. While they talk of something to be staged and photographed, and we watch something staged and photographed, the central clue is a photograph that has been carefully staged.It was written by an actor, based on real mystery games he conducted in his own home, then translated to screen with James Coburn playing the role of the writer. The murderer as it turns out is the writer.Within this remarkably imaginative structure are all sorts of clever elaborations of the genre. The Christie-Sayers model has one major upset of presumptions and one minor upset through an unrelated disclosure. Here, we have several:— the game to uncover the murder of Sheila turns out to not have been so. It was "rewritten" by the writer to be so. (Much is made of the fact that he is at a point in his career where writing is impossible and only rewriting occurs.) Later in the game he rewrites the evidence at the scene.— the confessed murderer of the gamemaker — which happens during the film — turns out to have been mistaken, but this is discovered too late for her.— the murder (of the gamemaker) is not because of anything intended in the game, nor related to the prior murder, but to a completely independent crime committed long before.— our special redhead, played in this case by a ditsy Raquel Welch, is the likely suspect. It is revealed that her "secret" was that she stole a garment. The murder occurs on a day in the game focused on her, and the gamemaker (Coburn) when murdered is dressed in a priest's getup, but with a redhead wig and makeup. A major twist comes when we discover that our writer — who is a ventriloquist (we see his puppets) — in rewriting the murder scene has used the corpse of the gamemaker as priest as redheaded whore as dummy.— the whole thing is unraveled at the end not by a conventional detective, but by the director of the upcoming film who is carefully working out the story he is to film. In the end, the murderer is not arrested as usual, but made to be complicit in the creation of the film we see. Watching a second time, you can see his discomfort in this repeated fold of him re-enacting the story.Very, very clever. A whole lot of fun, and if you allow it to, it stretches those folding muscles.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.