'Clue' Had A Fourth Alternate Ending That Got Super-Dark
Paving the way for Rihanna and Liam Neeson to one day battle aliens at sea, the 1985 comedy Clue took a popular board game and somehow turned it into a successful movie -- well, artistically successful, at any rate. Despite its modern reputation, Clue was a dud at the box office, and a big reason why was its unique structure which included three different endings.
Unfortunately, this ended up frustrating most audiences. This idea came from co-writer John Landis (who was originally set to direct the film) and was purely designed to inflate box office earnings because he thought people would “go back and pay again and see the other endings.” Whoops.
Originally there were going to be four possible endings, but one was mysteriously scrapped. Sadly, there’s no surviving footage of the lost ending, and the crew’s recollection is spotty. Tim Curry vaguely remembered an ending in which Wadsworth killed everyone, but it was “too obvious” because “the butler did it,” while in a recent interview, actress Lesley Ann Warren didn’t even remember there being a fourth ending at all.
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The only existing record of this alternate ending seems to be contained in the pages of Clue: The Storybook -- because in the ‘80s, even movies crammed full of murder and kinky blackmail schemes got children’s book tie-ins, apparently. The fourth ending, judging from the book, was surprisingly dark. Wadsworth the butler does indeed reveal himself to be the killer, then runs around the house, “ripping all the phones out of the walls.” Then he reveals that the champagne everyone drank was poisoned and they’ll be dead in three hours.
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When the cops show up, Wadsworth escapes, barricades them all inside the house, then is likely mauled to death by police dogs. So seemingly everybody dies in this ending, presumably to represent those Clue games where one friend ends everything by knocking over the entire board in frustration.
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Top Image: Paramount Pictures
