Did anyone else pull out a pen and paper to play "The Last of Sheila" game? I did on my first viewing (c'mon, I do the same with a revolving set of 72 Agatha Christie novels). Because I noted the cards displayed toward the beginning, I figured out pretty quickly that the clues would spell "SHEILA." But I wondered why there were two "H" cards (Homosexual, Hit-and-Run Killer) in addition to the "Alcoholic" card.
Still, I failed to solve the mystery, and when Tom trotted out his hypothesis and Lee confessed to the accident, I thought the movie was over. Instead, a whole new plotline developed. Did you find this to be a convincing or intriguing mystery? Did anything about it (Tom counting on Lee's cooperation in Clinton's death) seem contrived or far-fetched to you?
4 comments:
I didn't use pen and paper. I probably should have, since I have trouble following such things if they get complicated.
I think Tom was going to blame Lee without her having done anything. That's why he used the ice pick ("a feminine murder weapon"). It was just lucky for him that she did something that made her think she had killed him.
In other words, he was going to blame her while she protested her innocence, but then he was lucky enough for her to think she had killed him so then she didn't protest her innocence.
And Erin said she noticed that it wasn't Clinton's hand that opened and closed the sliding confessional grate door, so she knew he was already dead. I didn't notice that myself, but that would certainly be a good clue that the confession was not ultimately true.
Well, I had started to suspect Tom during the scene where they all reveal their cards. I just didn't buy Lee as the murderer, and Tom just seemed suspicious to me.
And it just didn't add up: The glassy look in Clinton's eyes when he was talking to Christine and Lee, the totally hooded figure who ripped the door off the confessional, the fact that Clinton probably wouldn't have died from being poked with a candlestick. So I figured there had to be a murderer other than Lee.
But I did not anticipate Philip's sleuthing at the end, with the photo and the cards spelling S-H-E-I-L-H. That was fun.
I thought something was up during those confessional scenes where Clinton was all glassy-eyed and you couldn't see his mouth moving, but it wasn't until they revealed he had died earlier that I made the connection.
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