A Version of This Article was Published in December 2021.
As everybody knows, the best thing that can happen in a movie is for a character to go “someone in this house is a murderer!”
I’m rounding up a bunch of movies with that general vibe, for you to enjoy this month. Here are a bunch of movies where a party at an estate goes horribly wrong, probably because someone gets killed or something is stolen. What I would not give for a good film adaptation of Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, or to find out that the French movie 8 Femmes were streaming, but c’est la vie, I suppose. Moving on!
Now, you might be asking, WHAT about the movies where someone getting killed or something getting stolen during a party at an estate is the POINT of that party in the first place, and therefore, from the perspective of the event’s puppetmaster, it means that the party at the estate is actually going horribly RIGHT? Not so fast, inspector! Of COURSE they are included in this list!
This list is just for movies, but if you like TV, I also recommend the miniseries adaptation of P.D. James’s Death Comes to Pemberly, which fits the bill rather nicely.
Look, the readers of this website do not need me to tell them to watch Knives Out or Clue or Gosford Park or whatever (also the millions of adaptations of An Inspector Calls but I’m not bothering with those because I find the whole deal boring and sad), but hopefully there will be a film on this list you haven’t heard of, or seen in a while, and you can tuck yourself onto the couch—clutching your remote, a glass of port, and your most valuable jewels.
The Rules of the Game (1939)
Jean Renoir’s 1939 masterpiece about a group of bourgeois French so-and-sos and their servants who wind up staying at a French chateau together is a satirical look at the insular, unfeeling high-society world just before the advent of World War II, but it’s also got lots of twists and mounting tension that really feel whodunnit-esque. Like all quality films, it’s got a masked ball scene.
Crooked House (2017)
In this movie, a DINNER party goes wrong, but it counts! Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes co-wrote this screenplay, an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel of the same name. The story follows a spy-turned-private-detective (just like me) who is tricked by his ex-girlfriend to solving the cause of her grandfather’s death (seems to be murder) before Scotland Yard inspectors swing by and threaten to unmask a whole lot more.
Judex (1963)
I love Judex, the elegant, complicated French caper directed by Georges Franju in 1963. It stars American magician Channing Pollock as Judex, a masked avenger-vigilante who blackmails a wealthy, unscrupulous banker but must sidestep these plans when the family’s former governess kidnaps the banker’s virtuous daughter Jacqueline in an attempt to ransom her. It all takes place at their estate and there is ALSO a masked ball scene in this one.
Knives Out (2019)
Again, no one who reads this website needs me to tell them to watch this movie. Knives Out. It’s streaming on Netflix. Let’s go.
Glass Onion (2022)
More Benoit Blanc interrupting rich people’s parties to solve murders!
The Mirror Crack’d (1980)
Before she became Jessica Fletcher, Angela Lansbury played the world’s other most famous nosy lady sleuth, Miss Jane Marple, in this classic Christie adaptation about an Englishwoman who winds up poisoned when her village ends up becoming the shooting location for a Hollywood picture and a glitzy party becomes the setting for a murder attempt! Miss Marple is on the case! And Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, and Geraldine Chaplin are also in the film! If you’re not obsessed with this movie right after seeing it, I’m sorry but you are clinically insane.
Murder by Death (1976)
So, Neil Simon’s star-studded farce Murder by Death (about a bunch of famous literary sleuths who wind up at the same manor house for a mysterious dinner party) might very well have been one of the funniest whodunit send-ups ever made IF it weren’t for the fact that it features some very NOT OKAY details that make it difficult to watch, like Peter Sellers in yellowface as Inspector Sidney Wang (the film’s Charlie Chan character, who, yes, was originally played by a lot of white guys in yellowface but that’s not a tradition we have to BRING BACK now is it?) or the fact that one of the running gags is that there’s a blind butler (Alec Guinness) and a deaf-mute maid (Nancy Walker) who can’t communicate with one another. Those parts are often downright insulting and just generally NOT GOOD. I wish this weren’t the case, especially because elsewhere, the move has a lot going for it, including Truman Capote as the mysterious host, and David Niven and Maggie Smith playing “Dick and Dora Charleston” (Nick and Nora Charles), or Peter Falk playing “Sam Diamond” (Sam Spade), or Elsa Lanchester as “Miss Marbles” (Miss Marple), or James Coco as “Milo Perrier” (Hercule Poirot). So anyway, it’s got lots of good stuff in there, but not all the way.
Clue (1985)
Clue, which I saw in ninth grade after my friend Steven brought his DVD to my house, is a lot like Murder by Death but without most of the insulting stuff. (Both movies also feature Eileen Brennan, which is neat.) And Clue IS also a lot like the Parker Brothers board game on which it is based if you play that game like I do, which to say, “while doing a Tim Curry voice.” Again, the readers of this website PROBABLY do not need me to introduce them to Clue, but it is a zany DELIGHT, so… I just thought I’d check and make sure. Everything good? “Yep. Two corpses. Everything’s fine.”
Murder, She Said (1961)
Following the success of Murder, She Said, Dame Margaret Rutherford was such a popular Miss Marple that MGM took a bunch of Hercule Poirot stories and put Miss Marple in them instead. But Murder, She Said is the grandmother of them all. When Miss Marple sees a murder take place through the window of a passing train (I KNOW), no one believes her. Obviously. SO, she takes a job as a maid at a nearby estate to ferret out the killer. There is a very good, very nosy dinner party scene.
The Beast Must Die (1974)
This classic English horror movie combines a quintessential cliche with a flash of lunacy: a millionaire hunter invites six people to a party at his manor in the English countryside, and then he says that someone among them is A WEREWOLF. GOD BLESS US, EVERY ONE!
Gosford Park (2001)
Not a day goes by where I don’t thank God for bringing us Bob Balaban, who conceived of this idea with director Robert Altman. But Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes is behind the Oscar-winning script! Sadly, this film is not streaming as part of any particular, prepaid SERVICE, but you can rent it basically anywhere, if you’re in the mood. AND YOU SHOULD BE IN THE MOOD. Yet again, the readers of CrimeReads do not need me to bring Gosford Park to their attention. But just in case, what’s it about? “Most of it takes place at a shooting party in a country house. Sort of like this one, actually. Murder in the middle of the night, a lot of guests for the weekend, everyone’s a suspect. You know, that sort of thing.” AM I DESCRIBING THE MOVIE OR THE MOVIE WITHIN THE MOVIE? I DON’T EVEN KNOW ANYMORE BUT I HAVE NEVER FELT JOLLIER.
