The presumed thrust behind these multiple climaxes was to triple the gross (as if!); additional benefits included spoiler-proof buzz as well as a shred of interactivity--Clue is, after all, based on a popular board game. Alas, the gimmick, which anticipated the possibilities of a digital medium, rendered Clue a higher-profile bomb than it would have otherwise been. (Final U.S. box office tally: $3 million. P&A alone probably cost more.)

The movie's concept is indebted not only to Parker Brothers but also to Neil Simon, whose Murder By Death, a delectably silly send-up of Agatha Christie mysteries Clue structurally resembles, if not mirrors. It is the McCarthy-era (1954), and six guests have been assigned pseudonyms and rounded up for an evening of intrigue at a New England mansion. Wadsworth the butler (the great Tim Curry) becomes their emcee after the cleverly named Mr. Boddy (Lee Ving), their de facto host, is murdered.

Mr. Boddy held something incriminating on all of the invitees, so everybody's a suspect, except for the chef, who has also turned up dead. Writer-director Jonathan Lynn (My Cousin Vinny), working from a story he cooked up with John Landis, stays ingeniously faithful to the source material, mixing and matching bodies and weapons so that the solution eventually becomes as random as opening that stupid envelope to reveal the killer.

But the price to pay for a trilogy of arbitrary conclusions that all make sense is a convoluted and ultimately inert plot. Given that Clue is first and foremost a comedy, the narrative is also burdened by the necessity for jokes. Lynn, the British wit responsible for the BBC sitcom "Yes, Prime Minister", bows to lazier urges here, loading the screenplay with musty cleavage jokes and ill-timed door slamming. Select moments had me laughing uproariously, particularly those involving an unlucky singing telegram, but this cast of consummate professionals deserved sharper material. The late Madeline Kahn, a veteran of Mel Brooks' funniest pictures, is grotesquely misused.

DVD, as I mentioned above, is the ideal home for Clue. When they released it on VHS in 1986, Paramount opted to present the alternate endings in a row, linking them by way of old-fashioned title cards. That Clue is contained on the recently pressed disc, along with every one of the theatrical versions, a novelty made possible by streaming branch technology. (Your player will freeze briefly as soon as Wadsworth cuts the electricity while it searches the DVD for a finale of its choice. More on that later.)

The 16x9-enhanced, 1.85:1 video transfer appears to have gone through very little remastering, but the image is still leaps and bounds better than the print that pops up on late night cable now and again. Its biggest problem is an abundance of the colour brown, which results in unflattering skin tones and smeary backgrounds. An on-the-ball telecine operator could have perked up the palette with little effort.

Clue is one of the few titles the studio has chosen to not remaster in Dolby Digital 5.1. Perhaps the original sound stems were not available; whatever the case, the DD 2.0 mono is sufficient, if edgy, with sound effects erring on the side of boomy. Now for the prize: upon selecting "Play" from the main menu, you're given the choice of crap-shooting a theatrical cut or watching the video paste-up. Once you've sat through the former in its entirety, the "Theatrical Trailer" (anamorphic) sub-menu will offer a chance to view the other two closers individually.-Bill Chambers