As a performer, Tim Curry knew how to walk a fine line. Even his most sinister characters had an ironic sort of appeal, because watching Curry have fun is, in itself, fun. The actor, who died yesterday at age 80, acted with palpable glee: He could produce a real-life version of the Grinch’s ever-widening grin and could commit to sheer silliness in a way that freed him to twirl around in a cape while singing a gibberish song about Halloween.
Perhaps nowhere was this more evident than in the 1985 film Clue. When the raucous comedy adaptation of the classic whodunit board game debuted in theaters, Paramount Pictures had a unique plan: Instead of one ending, the movie would have three, and audiences never knew which resolution—which killer, in which room, with which weapon—they were going to see. How could the studio sell viewers on a story as convoluted as Clue, whose script was designed to keep people guessing until the very last second? By recruiting an ensemble of comedy greats led by Curry, of course. The actor could easily inhabit a character who was neither wholly a hero nor totally a villain, but rather a merrily odd mix of both.
[Read: The absolute pleasure of Tim Curry]
As Wadsworth, the reticent butler observing the deadly dinner party central to Clue, the actor projects calm hauteur. This appearance, however, shows cracks the moment the partygoers start to trickle in. While the guests—each referred to by a colorful pseudonym—chafe against one another and a dastardly murder plot unfolds, you get the sense that Wadsworth almost wishes they’d all drop dead. As the night ticks closer to its big reveal, his eagerness to expose the true villain inches toward giddy. In a film full to the gills with such talented comedic performers as Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, and Michael McKean, Curry stands out not just because he’s in every scene but also because he lends Wadsworth his signature edge and too-toothy grin, landing between saucy and ominous.
This commitment to silliness was, perhaps paradoxically, why he was able to imbue even his villains with a particular allure. As The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s mad-scientist master of ceremonies, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, and as the child-eating clown Pennywise in Stephen King’s It, Curry’s best-known characters revel in their strangeness to such a degree that we love watching them on-screen because of—not despite—how frightening they are. His joy in playing these parts always comes across, inviting his audience to share in the merriment.
Wadsworth’s true nature is often obscure in Clue, but the murderous impulse is always there— just beneath the stiff collar and eternally rolling eyes. At the story’s climax, Wadsworth delivers, while running from room to room, a nearly 10-minute monologue so intricate that he almost stumbles over his own words. He prods and mocks the surviving partygoers while their anxiety mounts, kicking off cascades of slapstick pratfalls and wry asides. No matter where he took us, or what strange happenings would meet us there when we arrived, following Tim Curry has always been a delight.
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